Opening the text

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a
scholar of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary.
He died poor when Bret was quite young, consequently the education
of his son was confined to the common schools of the city. When
only seventeen years of age, young Harte, with his widowed mother,
emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he walked to the
mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a short
time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished
the material for his early literature. After leaving his school he
became a miner, and at odd times learned to set type in the office
of one of the frontier papers. He wrote sketches of the strange life
around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the proofs to
the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain
of acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the
paper, and in the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal
and incurred popular wrath for censuring a little massacre of Indians
by the leading citizens of the locality, which came near bringing a
mob upon him.

The young adventurer,――for he was little else at this time,――also
served as mounted messenger of an express company and as express
agent in several mountain towns, which gave him a full knowledge of
the picturesque features of mining life. In 1857 he returned to San
Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly literary
journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and
submitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These
were accepted and soon earned him an editorial position on the “Golden
Era.” After this he made many contributions to the daily papers and
his tales of Western life began to attract attention in the East. In
1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings. He attempted to
publish a newspaper of his own, “The Californian,” which was bright
and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a
scholar of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary.
He died poor when Bret was quite young, consequently the education
of his son was confined to the common schools of the city. When
only seventeen years of age, young Harte, with his widowed mother,
emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he walked to the
mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a short
time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished
the material for his early literature. After leaving his school he
became a miner, and at odd times learned to set type in the office
of one of the frontier papers. He wrote sketches of the strange life
around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the proofs to
the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain
of acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the
paper, and in the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal
and incurred popular wrath for censuring a little massacre of Indians
by the leading citizens of the locality, which came near bringing a
mob upon him.

The young adventurer,――for he was little else at this time,――also
served as mounted messenger of an express company and as express
agent in several mountain towns, which gave him a full knowledge of
the picturesque features of mining life. In 1857 he returned to San
Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly literary
journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and
submitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These
were accepted and soon earned him an editorial position on the “Golden
Era.” After this he made many contributions to the daily papers and
his tales of Western life began to attract attention in the East. In
1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings. He attempted to
publish a newspaper of his own, “The Californian,” which was bright
and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

No reviews yet