The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers

In discussing Bret Harte, it is almost impossible to separate substance from style. The style is so good, so exactly adapted to the ideas which he wishes to convey, that one can...

To be successful and popular among the Pioneers was something really to a man's credit. Men were thrown upon their own resources, and, as in Mediaeval times, were their own poli...

Before Bret Harte left California he had been in correspondence with some persons in Chicago who proposed to make him Editor and part proprietor of a magazine called the "Lakesi...

When Bret Harte first became famous he was accused of misrepresenting Pioneer society. A California writer of great ability--no less a person than Professor Royce, the eminent p...

Most of the newspaper men in the early days of California were Southerners or under Southern influence, as is plain from many indications. For example, duelling and shooting at...

Bret Harte returned to San Francisco in 1857, and his first occupation was that of setting type in the office of the "Golden Era." To this paper his sister, Mrs. Wyman, had been...

California certainly contained what Borthwick describes as "the elite of the most desperate and consummate scoundrels from every part of the world"; but they were in a very smal...

In 1880, during one of his many visits to London, Bret Harte made the acquaintance of M. Arthur and Mme. Van de Velde, who were already enthusiastic readers of his works, and it...

The chief source of demoralization among the Pioneers was the absence of women and children, and therefore of any real home. "Ours is a bachelor community," remarked the "Alta C...

The sums that Bret Harte received for his stories and lectures did not suffice to free him from debt, and he suffered much anxiety and distress from present difficulties, with n...

Bret Harte's faculty was not so much that of imagining as of apprehending human character. Some writers of fiction, those who have the highest form of creative imagination, are...

Bret Harte and his sister arrived at San Francisco in March, 1854, stayed there one night, and went the next morning to Oakland, across the Bay, where their mother and her secon...

Whether Bret Harte will make his appeal to posterity mainly as a poet or as a prose writer is a difficult question, upon which, as upon all similar matters relating to him, the...

Doubts have sometimes been cast upon Bret Harte's description of the gambling element in California life, but contemporary accounts fully sustain the picture which he drew. One...

Francis Brett Harte was born at Albany in the State of New York, on August twenty-fifth, 1836. By his relatives and early friends he was called Frank; but soon after beginning h...

"Two years ago," said the "Alta California" in 1851, "trade was a wild unorganized whirl." Staple goods went furiously up and down in price like wild-cat mining stocks. There wa...

In Bret Harte's stories woman is subordinated to man, and love is subordinated to friendship. This is a strange reversal of modern notions, but it was the reflection of his Cali...

In September he wrote to a friend: "As I am trying to get up a good reputation here, I stay at my post pretty regularly, occasionally making a cheap excursion. This is a country...

Occasionally Bret Harte uses an archaic word, not because it is archaic, but because it expresses his meaning better than any other, or gives the needed stimulus to the imaginat...

Bret Harte, as we have seen, was, for a few years at least, well placed in San Francisco, but, as time went on, he had many causes of unhappiness. There were heavy demands upon...

After the death of Henry Hart, his widow remained with her children in New York and Brooklyn until 1853. They were supported in part by her family, the Ostranders, and in part b...