Literary San Francisco: Bret Harte

San Francisco Public Library
Journalist and author Frances Bret Harte was the editor of San Francisco's successful Overland Monthly when he published his story, "The Luck of the Roaring Camp" which brought him instant and wide fame in the late 1860s. Luck was the child of a camp prostitute raised with the help of altruistic miners in Victorian society. Much of Harte's work features some kind of reprobate who's redeemed by sacrifice and self denial. In 1870 his stories and his respected work at the helm of the Overland Monthly earned him a then lucrative $10,000 a year contract writing one poem or story per month for the Atlantic Monthly. Harte left California but not before his work greatly influenced local color fiction here and elsewhere. His work elevated and romanticized Gold Rush denizens for a culture that was ready to listen. The same year, 1870, Harte wrote the poem, "Plain Language from Truthful Jim," aka "The Heathen Chinee" which was easily exploited by racists for its unflattering portrayal of a Chinese card shark and the pronouncement by its narrator that "We are ruined by cheap Chinese labor." During and after his run with the Atlantic Monthly, Harte's career took him to New York, Boston, Glasgow, and Crefeld, Germany. Harte later lived in England where he wrote marginal stories using familiar material.

Copyright 2001 Hank Donat
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