Bret Harte
(1836–1902)

Though relatively few of his stories were successful, Bret Harte played an important role in creating a vivid, lasting portrait of the old West. Harte's stories, filled with intriguing characters and colorful dialogue, provided much of post-Civil-War America with its first glimpse into western life and established the old West as a popular literary setting.

Harte was born and raised in Albany, New York. In 1854, when he was eighteen, he traveled across the country to California. During his first few years in California, a land in a turbulent period of rapid growth brought about by the discovery of gold in 1848, Harte worked as a schoolteacher, tutor, messenger, clerk, and prospector. While Harte's life seemed to have little direction at the time, his observations of the rugged, often violent life in the mining camps and the towns and cities of the new frontier provided him with the inspiration for his most successful short stories.

After working as a typesetter and writer for two California periodicals and publishing two books of verse, Outcroppings (1856) and The Lost Galleon (1867), Harte became the editor of the Overland Monthly, a new literary magazine, in 1868. When Harte published his story "The Luck of Roaring Camp" in the magazine's second issue, he immediately became famous, as the American public, eager to learn about life in the new frontier, responded to the story with enthusiasm. Over the next two years, Harte published "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and several other similar stories in the Overland Monthly, and his popularity grew at a rapid pace.

Following the publication of The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches in 1870, Harte's popularity reached its peak. In 1871 the Atlantic Monthly, a distinguished literary magazine, contracted to pay Harte $10,000 for any twelve sketches of stories he contributed over the next year. Harte returned to the East to fulfill his contract, but the stories he wrote were flat and disappointing compared with his earlier work, and his celebrity waned as quickly as it had grown.

Harte continued to publish stories, short novels, and plays during the next twenty years, but for the most part, his later work was unsuccessful. From 1878 to 1885, he was a diplomat in Germany and Scotland. He then retired to London, where he lived for the remainder of his life.

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