Harte, (Francis) Bret(T)

Harte, [Francis] Bret[T] (1836–1902), born in Albany, N.Y., went to California (1854), where he engaged in various occupations, including a brief attempt at mining in the Mother Lode. In 1860 he settled in San Francisco, where he became a printer and journalist, and through his contributions to the Golden Era and the Californian became a prominent literary figure, whose successes included tales about Spanish California in the vein of Washington Irving and a novelette, “M'liss,” about a young girl's adventures in the gold‐rush mining country. Outcroppings (1865), an anthology of local verse; The Lost Galleon (1867), a collection of his poems; and Condensed Novels and Other Papers (1867), distinguished for its satirical parodies of famous authors, were his first books. The following year Harte became editor of the newly founded Overland Monthly, in which he published his local‐color stories, mainly concerned with moral contrasts, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” “Tennessee's Partner,” Miggles, and Brown of Calaveras. His famous comic ballad, “Plain Language from Truthful James” (1870), often called The Heathen Chinee, also appeared at this time, and, with the collection of The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (1870), he was swept into popular favor throughout the U.S. He immediately made a triumphal trip east, where he received a contract from the Atlantic Monthly for $10,000 for 12 contributions. He fulfilled the contract with mediocre writing, and his short‐lived popularity came to an end. During subsequent years, Harte collected his magazine contributions in Mrs. Skagg's Husbands (1873), Tales of the Argonauts (1875), An Heiress of Red Dog and Other Sketches (1878), A Sappho of Green Springs and Other Stories (1891), and Colonel Starbottle's Client and Some Other People (1892). He also wrote two short novels, Gabriel Conroy (1876) and Jeff Briggs's Love Story (1880), and two plays, Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876) and Ah Sin (1877), the latter adapted with Clemens, as well as many other works, but none of these approached the success of his earliest writings. He became U.S. consul at Crefeld, Rhenish Prussia (1878), and at Glasgow (1880–85). He lived the remainder of his life in London, where editors accepted his stories more readily than did the American magazines. During his last years he was little better than a hack writer, turning out imitations of the California stories that had won him fame.