Gold Mines and Law Books: H.H. Bancroft's California Bookshop

The California Gold Rush not only brought thousands of miners seeking to make a fortune to California's gold fields, but also those who served their needs such as merchants and lawyers. Lawyers needed law books, and H.H. Bancroft, an entrepreneurial merchant and bookseller, established a large scale bookselling operation that overcame the difficulties of transcontinental shipping and financing. His creation lasted more than a century and published and sold scores of important legal texts without which the California Bar would have been far less successful. This chapbook takes the reader back to Gold Rush California, clipper ships, and overland mail and evokes the triumphs of H.H. Bancroft, one of the great entrepreneurial booksellers of antebellum America.

24 pp., 6 b&w illustrations.