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THE AMERICANIZATION OF EDWARD BOK
THE AMERICANIZATION OF EDWARD BOK EDWARD WILLIAM BOK by Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
To the American woman I owe much but to two women I owe more
My mother and my wife.
And to them I dedicate this account of the boy to whom one gave
birth and brought to manhood and the other blessed with all a
home and family may mean.
An Explanation
This book was to have been written in 1914 when I foresaw some leisure
to write it for I then intended to retire from active editorship. But
the war came an entirely new set of duties commanded and the project
was laid aside.
Its title and the form however were then chosen. By the form I refer
particularly to the use of the third person. I had always felt the most
effective method of writing an autobiography for the sake of a better
perspective was mentally to separate the writer from his subject by
this device.
Moreover this method came to me very naturally in dealing with the
Edward Bok editor and publicist whom I have tried to describe in this
book because in many respects he has had and has been a personality
apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching
with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work.
I have in turn applauded him and criticised him as I do in this book.
Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward
Bok: simply that he was different. His tastes his outlook his manner
of looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact my
chief difficulty during Edward Bok's directorship of The Ladies' Home
Journal was to abstain from breaking through the editor and revealing my
real self. Several times I did so and each time I saw how different was
the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed
sway. Little by little I learned to subordinate myself and to let him
have full rein.
But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as his decision
to retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised and
amused by my intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to those
closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute
freedom and gratitude that I felt.
Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself.
There are no longer two personalities. The Edward Bok of whom I have
written has passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been
there save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy
therefore for me to write of him as a personality apart: in fact I
could not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him in
the first person as if he were myself is impossible for he is not.
The title suggests my principal reason for writing the book. Every life
has some interest and significance; mine perhaps a special one. Here
was a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to
make himself understood or even to know what persons were saying; his
education was extremely limited practically negligible; and yet by
some curious decree of fate he was destined to write for a period of
years to the largest body of readers ever addressed by an American
editor--the circulation of the magazine he edited running into figures
previously unheard of in periodical literature. He made no pretense to
style or even to composition: his grammar was faulty as it was natural
it should be in a language not his own. His roots never went deep for
the intellectual soil had not been favorable to their growth;--yet it
must be confessed he achieved.
But how all this came about how such a boy with every disadvantage to
overcome was able apparently to "make good"--this possesses an
interest and for some perhaps a value which after all is the only
reason for any book.
EDWARD W. BOK
MERION PENNSYLVANIA 1920
CONTENTS
An Explanation
An Introduction of Two Persons
I. The First Days in America
II. The First Job: Fifty Cents a Week
III. The Hunger for Self-Education
IV. A Presidential Friend and a Boston Pilgrimage
V. Going to the Theatre with Longfellow
VI. Phillips Brooks's Books and Emerson's Mental Mist
VII. A Plunge into Wall Street
VIII. Starting a Newspaper Syndicate
IX. Association with Henry Ward Beecher
X. The First "Woman's Page" "Literary Leaves" and Entering Scribner's
XI. The Chances for Success
XII. Baptism Under Fire
XIII. Publishing Incidents and Anecdotes
XIV. Last Years in New York
XV. Successful Editorship
XVI. First Years as a Woman's Editor
XVII. Eugene Field's Practical Jokes
XVIII. Building Up a Magazine
XIX. Personality Letters
XX. Meeting a Reverse or Two
XXI. A Signal Piece of Constructive Work
XXII. An Adventure in Civic and Private Art
XXIII. Theodore Roosevelt's Influence
XXIV. Theodore Roosevelt's Anonymous Editorial Work
XXV. The President and the Boy
XXVI. The Literary Back-Stairs
XXVII. Women's Clubs and Woman Suffrage
XXVIII. Going Home with Kipling and as a Lecturer
XXIX. An Excursion into the Feminine Nature
XXX. Cleaning Up the Patent-Medicine and Other Evils
XXXI. Adventures in Civics
XXXII. A Bewildered Bok
XXXIII. How Millions of People Are Reached
XXXIV. A War Magazine and War Activities
XXXV. At the Battle-Fronts in the Great War
XXXVI. The End of Thirty Years' Editorship
XXXVII. The Third Period
XXXVIII. Where America Fell Short with Me
XXXIX. What I Owe to America
Edward William Bok: Biographical Data
The Expression of a Personal Pleasure
An Introduction of Two Persons
IN WHOSE LIVES ARE FOUND THE SOURCE AND MAINSPRING OF SOME OF THE
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