[originaltext] Bret Harte, a member of an educated but poor New York family,

Bret Harte, a member of an educated but poor New York family, went to California as a young man in 1854. He settled in San Francisco in 1860 and a year later became editor of the Overland Monthly in which he published many of his famous stories of the Far West. Harte seems to have succeeded in spite of himself, for he never adjusted to the wild, rough mining country and, for a time, considered the life of the mining camps unsuitable subject matter for literature.
    In the 1860’s, Eastern magazines featured mostly English authors, but their readers were eager for American fiction. Therefore, when Harte’s story "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was reprinted in the Atlantic Monthly, it created a literary sensation in the East. After Harte’s initial success, Eastern editors printed other mining camp tales of his, and with the publication of a collection in book form in 1870, he became popular throughout the nation.
    Soon after the collection was published, Harte made a successful return to the East. He continued to write in New York for seven years, but his stories were uneven in quality and his popularity declined. In 1878 he went to Europe. After serving as a United States consul in Germany and Scotland, Harte settled
in England, where he remained until his death in 1902. Although English editors continued to publish his stories, he never regained his popularity, for his tales were for the most part imitations of his earlier successes.