Book excerpt: The travelog 'An American Girl in London' was written by Sara Jeannette Duncan, a Canadian author and journalist who wrote under various pseudonyms, including Mrs. Everard Cotes and Garth Grafton. After initially training as a teacher, she pursued a career in writing, working as a travel writer for Canadian newspapers and a columnist for the Toronto Globe. She later wrote for the Washington Post and was in charge of the current literature section. Duncan also traveled to India, where she married an Anglo-Indian civil servant, and subsequently divided her time between England and India.