Bret Harte

Bret Harte (1836-1902), American writer, best known for his works of local color set in the American West. Born in Albany, New York, Harte moved with his family to California in 1854. Later he became a typesetter for the Golden Era, a San Francisco newspaper, to which he contributed parodies satirizing contemporary writers.

In 1868 Harte helped to establish and became editor of the Overland Monthly, which published many of his best-known stories, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” (1869), and his comic poem “Plain Language from Truthful James” (1870), also known as “The Heathen Chinee.” Despite their coarseness, these works have come to be regarded as classics of American regional literature and are noted for their descriptions of the lusty, humorous, and sometimes violent life typical of the mining camps and towns of California in the late 19th century. A collection of Harte's stories, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, was greeted with acclaim in 1870.

Harte subsequently went to New York City and wrote for the Atlantic Monthly, but the quality of his work deteriorated. The ensuing decline in his popularity, coupled with his extravagant lifestyle, soon left him penniless. Through friends, he became a United States consul at Krefeld, Germany, in 1878, and in 1880 he was transferred to Glasgow, Scotland. Harte continued to write while serving in these positions, and two of his later stories, “An Ingénue of the Sierras” and “A Protégée of Jack Hamlin's” (both 1893), are considered by many critics to be superior to his early works.