Francis Bret Harts

HARTS, FRANCIS BRET (1839-1902), American author, was born in Albany, N.Y., on Aug. 25, 1839, of English and Dutch parentage. His grandfather on his father's side was a Jew. His father, a school teacher, and his mother gave him a rich intel lectual and literary background, and their library gave him every opportunity to read widely and well. Ill health from six to ten kept the young lad from engaging in games with other children and he spent those years reading Shakespeare, Froissart, Dickens, Fielding, Washington Irving and others. At the age of II he wrote a poem, "Autumnal Musings," which was published in the New York Sunday Atlas. His family discouraged further poems, and while he continued to write them he made no attempt to have them published at the time. Later he was amply repaid for his patience.

Owing to family financial straits, Bret Harte left school when only 13, spent about a year in a lawyer's office and then went to the counting room of a merchant. He was supporting himself by the time he was 16. Three years later he joined his mother who had gone to California. For a time he taught in a school, clerked for an apothecary, tutored and was an express messenger on a California stage, but was also writing stories and poems for magazines. Later he became a printer for the Humboldt Times (Calif.), and then assistant editor of the Northern California, the latter work being cut short by a scathing editorial, written in his chief's absence on the massacre of Indians by Americans, which aroused the antagonism of the community. But his varied experiences and continued journeyings furnished inspiration and material for his frontier tales.

In

1857 Bret Harte became a typesetter for the Golden Era ; in San Francisco. Here he so interested the editor that he was given an opportunity to contribute some short sketches and later worked in the editorial room. In 1864 he procured a position as secretary of the California Mint which gave him more time for his writing. He wrote a series of Condensed Novels, parodies of well known fiction, for The Californian, to which Mark Twain was also contributing. A year later his book of poems, The Lost Galleon, appeared. In 1868 he was made editor of the Overland Monthly. The Luck of Roaring Camp, which he wrote for this magazine, attracted the attention of editors in the East and brought requests for his vivid western' tales. He was also made a professor of recent literature at the University of California, which work he continued for two years with his editorship of The Overland and his work at the Mint. Then his verses, "The Heathen Chinee," brought such urgent demands from the East to return that he went to New York in 1871.

Bret Harte was lionized by the whole country and "hailed as a new prophet in American letters." His trip East, so like a triumphal march, caught the attention of foreign papers and his stories were reprinted and translated abroad. For a time he was in great demand as a lecturer on his Californian experiences and he continued writing his stories of pioneer life. Unfortunately, however, his income did not provide for the extravagant living he insisted on and he became involved in financial difficulties. His friends were instrumental in having him appointed as U.S. com mercial agent at Crefeld in Germany. Reluctantly and yet with mingled relief and hope of re-establishing himself he left America, never to return.

He was most cordially welcomed in literary circles in London where he spent much of his time, writing and lecturing. He was never happy about his work in Crefeld, and in 188o was appointed consul to Glasgow. During the five years in this office he Wrote a large number of stories for American magazines and attempted several plays which, however, proved unsuccessful. From 1885 until his death on May 5, 1902, in Camberley, England, Bret Harte lived in London.

It is doubtful if Bret Harte ever surpassed the work of his early stories The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat and Tennessee's Partner, yet he did reach the high level of these masterpieces in The Twins of Table Mountain, The Ancestors of Peter Atherley and Left Out on Lone Star Mountain. His outstanding poem was "The Heathen Chinee." BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Works (2o vols., 1904) ; Letters of Bret Harte Bibliography.--Works (2o vols., 1904) ; Letters of Bret Harte (1926) ; H. C. Merwin, Life of Bret Harte (191I) ; J. Erskine, "Bret Harte," in Leading American Novelists (191o) ; L. L. Hazard, The Frontier in American Literature (1927).