The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers

Bret Harte's birth year is variously given as 1836 and 1839, and his tombstone bears the date 1837. He is remembered especially for his two short stories, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (1868) and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" (1870), both achievements in local color. The former is the story of an orphaned baby adopted by the men in a gold-rush-era mining camp; it was dramatized by Dion Boucicault in 1894. The latter is a tale about four undesirables expelled from a mining camp and their losing battle against a blizzard. Although he was born in the East and lived there and in Europe most of his life, Harte's 17 years of residence in California have associated him most closely with that state, and the scenes of all his successful stories are set in the West. His contemporary sketches of life in San Francisco during the 1860s, written with Mark Twain, were first collected in book form as Sketches of the Sixties (1926). When he went east again to settle in Boston in 1871, his talent seems to have deserted him. Much of his later life was spent in England. Today, his formerly out-of-print stories are available in reprint versions from Ayer Publishers. Francis Brett Harte wurde am 25.08.1836 in Albany, New York geboren; er starb am 05.05.1902 in Camberley, Großbritannien. Bret Harte war der Sohn eines Lehrers; er wuchs in New York auf. 1854 ging er nach Kalifornien und nahm Gelegenheitsarbeiten in den Goldminen an, arbeitete aber auch als Lehrer und Journalist. Von 1860 bis 1878 lebte er in San Francisco, dort befreundete er sich mit MarkTwain. 1871 ging er nach New York zurück. 1878 reiste er nach Europa und war für zwei Jahre Konsul in Krefeld, von 1880-1885 Konsul in Glasgow.