parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility;
devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving,
Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable success, attempted
various forms of composition. Then, compelled by economic necessity, he
left school at thirteen, and for three years worked first in a lawyer's
office, and then in a merchant's counting house.

The second period, that of his migration to California, includes all
that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving in
California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-teacher, drug-store
clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. He
worked for a while on the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he was
dismissed for objecting editorially to the contemporary California sport
of murdering Indians), then on the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved
his first moderate acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswold
of New York. In 1864 he was given the secretaryship of the California
mint, a virtual sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.
The first volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES,
CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS
were published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which
had aspirations of becoming "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," was
established, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he wrote
most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF ROARING
CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES,
among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor and
Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel material,
with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editors
began to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointed
him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him
the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to one