Harte,
Francis Bret (1836-1902) was born
in Albany, NY on August 25, 1836. In
1852, at the age of eighteen he and
his widower mother moved to
California, where he worked as a
miner, teacher, messenger for Wells
Fargo, printer & journalist.
He
later moved to San Francisco where he
worked for the Golden Era
before becoming the editor of the Northern
Californian. In 1868 he became the
first editor of the Overland
Monthly and established it as one
of America’s leading literary
journals by publishing his own poems
& stories in it. "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" and "Outcasts
of Poker Flat" appeared there and
brought him enormous success and
recognition especially in the east
where his stories of the American West
were in great demand.
He was
subsequently asked to
contribute to a number of eastern publications. It was these stories
that made California famous. He
published his first collection of
stories The Luck of Roaring Camp
and Other Stories in 1870 and the
following year was paid $10,000 by
Atlantic Monthly to produce twelve
stories a year for the journal.
While
editor of the Overland Monthly,
he helped Sam Clemens get started
after he moved to San Francisco by
publishing his writings in the journal.
He provided Sam with editorial
assistance on The Innocents Abroad
in exchange for being allowed to
publish excerpts in the journal. They
even collaborated on a play together
called Ah Sin, but it
eventually led to a bitter falling out
between the two.
He served as
Secretary of the U.S. California
Branch Mint before moving to New York
in 1871 and later to Boston. In 1878
he was appointed United States Counsul
at Crefeld, Germany. He obtained a
similar postion in Glasgow, Scotland
two years later. He moved to London in
1885 and continued to publish
collections of his stories. He died
there in May, 1902 of throat cancer.