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Title: The Americanization of Edward Bok
The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

Author: Edward William Bok

Release Date: November, 2002 [Etext #3538]
Posting Date: March 8, 2010 [EBook #3538]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE AMERICANIZATION OF EDWARD BOK

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A DUTCH BOY FIFTY YEARS AFTER

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.