FRANCIS BRET

See also:

• FRANCIS BRET HARTE (1839–1902)

HARTE (1839–1902)  , American author, was born at Albany, New York, on the 25th of August 1839 . His father, a professor of Greek at the Albany College, died during his boyhood . After a common-school education he went with his mother to California at the age of seventeen, afterwards working in that state as a teacher, miner, printer, express-messenger, secretary of the San Francisco mint, and editor . His first literary venture was a series of Condensed Novels (travesties of well-known works of fiction, somewhat in the style of Thackeray), published weekly in The Californian, of which he was editor, and reissued in book form in 1867 . The Overland Monthly, the earliest considerable literary magazine on the Pacific coast, was established in 1868, with Harte as editor . His sketches and poems, which appeared in its pages during the next few years, attracted wide attention in the eastern states and in Europe . Bret Harte was an early master of the short story, and his Californian tales were regarded as introducing a new genre into fiction . " The Luck of Roaring Camp " (1868), " The Outcasts of Poker Flat " (1869), the later sketch " How Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar," and the verses entitled " Plain Language from Truthful James," combined humour, pathos and power of character portrayal in a manner that indicated that the new land of mining-gulches, gamblers, unassimilated Asiatics, and picturesque and varied landscape had found its best delineator; so that Harte became, in his pioneer pictures, a sort of later Fenimore Cooper . Forty-four volumes were published by him between 1867 and 1898 . After a year as professor in the university of California, Harte lived in New York, 1871–1878; was United States consul at Crefeld, Germany, 1878–1880; consul at Glasgow, 188o–1885; and after 1885 resided in London, engaged in literary work . He died at Camberley, England, on the 5th of May 1902 . A library edition of his Writings (16 vols.) was issued in 1900, and increased to 19 vols. in 1904 .

See also H . W . Boynton, Bret Harte (1905) in the Contemporary Men of Letters series; T . E . Pemberton,

Life of Bret Harte (1903), which contains a list of his poems, tales, &c .