ABSTRACT
John Bancks comes down to us as a success story of authorial self-fashioning. He published without the fanfare and royal patronage that Duck enjoyed, though Bancks certainly sought that easier route to writerly self-sufficiency early on. Theophilus Cibber notes that Bancks's uncle-m-law was unable either to support him or assist him to another trade, though Bancks's circumstances were relieved by another relation from whom he inherited ten pounds. Poems on Several Occasions apparently won praise from Pope, spurring Bancks to embark on his most ambitious project: the two-volume set titled Miscellaneous Works. Perhaps inspired by the success of Miscellaneous Works, Bancks quit Montague's employ and 'made an effort to live by writing only'. His success speaks both to the inroads non-gendemanly writers could make in the literary marketplace in the period, and to Bancks's own wit, talent, and strength of character.
