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Nancy Huston Banks (October 28, 1849 – April 6, 1934) was an American journalist, literary critic, and novelist from Kentucky.

Early life

Nancy Huston was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, the daughter of George Huston, a judge, and Sallie Brady Huston. She was educated at the Convent of St. Vincent.

Career

During the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Banks was on the Board of Lady Managers, and worked for the fair as a writer and editor. Banks moved to New York to pursue a writing career in the early 1890s. She was on staff at The Bookman magazine in its first year as a book reviewer. She also lived in London for a time, and reported from South Africa during the Boer War for a London newspaper. For a time in November 1899, she was reported caught in the Siege of Kimberley, blockaded by the Boer army, in the company of Cecil Rhodes and fellow New Yorker Amalia Küssner, a miniaturist.

Nancy Huston Banks also wrote novels, including Stairs of Sand (1890), Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century (1902), Round Anvil Rock: A Romance (1903), and The Little Hills (1905). In reviewing the last title, Frederic Taber Cooper commented that "Few are so fortunate as Mrs. Banks in knowing the range and boundaries of their intellectual gardens, the thoughts and fancies that will best flower therein."

Personal life

Nancy Huston married lawyer James N. Banks. She died in 1934 in Washington, D.C., aged 84.

References

1. "Long Life; Ended in Death for Judge George Huston" Courier-Journal (August 3, 1904): 3. via Newspapers.com
2. History of Union County, Kentucky (Courier Company 1886): 199.
3. "Nancy H. Banks" Book News (July 1902): 881.
4. Sarah Wadsworth, Wayne A. Wiegand. Right Here I See My Own Books: The Woman's Building Library at the World's Columbian Exposition (University of Massachusetts Press 2012): 44. ISBN 9781558499287
5. "Lady Managers Wrangling" New York Times (August 8, 1893): 4.
6. Nancy Huston Banks, "Woman's Marvellous Achievements" The World's Fair as Seen in One Hundred Days (National Publishing Company 1893): 631-650.
7. Flora Mai Holly, "Some Prominent Southerners in New York" Bob Taylor's Magazine (December 1905): 292.
8. Richard M. Weatherford, ed., Stephen Crane (Routledge 2013): 96. ISBN 9781136211744
9. "Cooped in Kimberley" Wichita Daily Eagle (November 26, 1899): 16. via Newspapers.com
10. Nancy Huston Banks, The Online Books Page.
11. Frederic Taber Cooper, "The Best Realism and Some Recent Books" Bookman (August 1905): 599.
12. John Wilson Townsend, Kentucky in American Letters, 1784-1912 (Torch Press 1913): p. 18.

External links

• The Museum of the City of New York has a photograph of Nancy Huston Banks at a table of other guests, at a "Dinner, to Mark Twain in Honor of his 70th Birthday at Delmonico's on December 5, 1905." Other guests at the same table include political cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, actor Gilbert Emery, novelist Rex Beach, and writer Louise Forsslund.
• Nancy Huston Banks, Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century (MacMillan 1902).
• Nancy Huston Banks, Round Anvil Rock: A Romance (MacMillan 1903).

• 1849 births
• 1934 deaths
• American women novelists
• 19th-century American novelists
• 20th-century American novelists
• 19th-century American women journalists
• 19th-century American journalists
• 20th-century American women writers
• American literary critics
• American women literary critics
• Novelists from Kentucky
• People from Morganfield, Kentucky
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers