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Famous Like Me > Writer > H > Bret Harte

Profile of Bret Harte on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Bret Harte  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 25th August 1836
   
Place of Birth: Albany, New York, USA
   
Profession: Writer
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836–May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. Born in Albany, New York, he moved to California in 1854, later working there in a number of roles, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist.

Bret Harte

His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appeared in the magazine's second edition, propelling Harte to nationwide fame.

When word of Dickens's death reached Bret Harte in July of 1870, he immediately sent a dispatch across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming publication of his Overland Monthly for twenty-four hours, so that he could compose the poetic tribute, Dickens in Camp. This work is considered by many of Harte's admirers as his masterpiece of verse, for its evident sincerity, the depth of feeling it displays, and the unusual quality of its poetic expression. The spirit of Dickens breathes through the poems and stories of Bret Harte just as the spirit of Bret Harte breathes through the poems and stories of Kipling.

Determined to pursue his literary career, he traveled back East, to New York and eventually to Boston, where he continued writing poems, sketches, and stories capturing the excitement of his earlier years in California.

As an established literary figure, he was appointed to the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany in 1878 and Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. During the thirty years he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing, and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. He died in England in 1902 and is buried at Frimley.

In his autobiography, Mark Twain famously insults Harte, though he had been dead four years already at the time of composition. Twain calls Harte and his writing insincere. He gives light respect to "Luck of Roaring Camp" but also criticizes the miners' dialect, claiming it never existed outside of the story. Twain reserves his most damning statements for Harte's personal life, especially after Harte left the West.

Primary sources

  • Bret Harte Etexts
  • Works by Bret Harte at Project Gutenberg
  • Complete bibliography
  • Online Bret Harte bibliography

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Bret Harte