A
Quick Overview
He was originally named FRANCIS BRETT HARTE Born on August 25,
1836, in Albany, N.Y., U.S., this most American of authors ironically died
in London England, May 5, 1902., He is remembered as the writer who helped
create the "local-colour school in American fiction."
"Harte, Bret" Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/260/37.html>
[Accessed 29 August 1998].
Comments: As he describes the world of America's Old West Harte is constantly finding the value in individuals whom society considers unworthy. He's made me weep more than once.
Links
THE
HEATHEN CHINEE
llustrations of F. Bret
Harte's poem, Plain Language from Truthful James or The Heathen Chinee.
Nine lithographs after Joseph Hull issued in 1870. First edition, first
issue.
http://philaprintshop.com/
Bret
Harte
Bret Harte Gold Country
Malakoff Home
http://www.malakoff.com
ANGELS
CAMP, CALIFORNIA
Welcome to Angels Camp!
Angels Camp is the site of the famous Mark Twain story "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and is also suspected as the real "Roaring
Camp" from the nearly as well known Bret Harte story. Founded in 1848 by...
http://www.nsierra.org/
The following information and links were drawn from the Encyclopedia
Britannica On-Line
His
Life
Harte's family settled in New York City and Brooklyn in 1845. His
education was spotty and irregular, but he inherited a love of books and
managed to get some verses published at age 11. In 1854 he left for
California and went into mining country on a brief trip that legend has
expanded into a lengthy participation in, and intimate knowledge of, camp
life. In 1857 he was employed by the Northern Californian, a weekly
paper. There his support of Indians and Mexicans proved unpopular; after
a massacre of Indians in 1860, which he editorially deplored, he found
it
advisable to leave town.
Returning to San Francisco, he was married and began to write for the
Golden Era, which published the first of his Condensed Novels, brilliant
parodies of James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and
others. He then became a clerk in the U.S. branch mint, a job that allowed
freedom for editorship of the Californian, for which he engaged Mark
Twain to write weekly articles.
In 1868, after publishing a series of Spanish legends akin to Washington
Irving's Alhambra, he was named editor of the Overland Monthly. For it
he wrote "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat."
Following The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870), he
found himself world famous. He furthered his reputation with "Plain
Language from Truthful James" (1870), better known as "The Heathen
Chinee," a poem that attracted national attention. On it he based his best
play, Ah Sin (1877), a collaboration with Twain.
Flushed with success, Harte in 1871 signed with The Atlantic Monthly
for $10,000 for 12 stories a year, the highest figure offered an American
writer up to that time. Resigning a professorship at the University of
California, Harte left for the East, never to return. In New England he
was greeted as an equal by the writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and William Dean Howells,
and was lionized and toasted to the point of spiritual and moral breakdown.
With personal and family difficulties, his work slumped. After several
years of indifferent success on the lecture circuit, Harte in 1878 accepted
consulships in Crefeld, Ger., and later in Glasgow, Scot. In 1885 he retired
to London. His wife and family joined him at wide intervals, but he never
returned to the United States.
He found in England a ready audience for his tales of a past or mythical
California long after American readers had tired of his formula. "Ingénue
of the Sierras" and "A Protégée of Jack Hamlin's" (both 1893)
are perhaps
better than his earlier stories.
"Harte, Bret" Britannica Online.
<http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/260/37.html>
[Accessed 29 August 1998].