Bret Harte was an American poet and short story writer who was born on August 25, 1836 and died on May 5, 1902. He is best known for his short stories about miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures from the California Gold Rush. In a career that lasted more than 40 years, he also wrote poems, plays, lectures, editorials, reviews of books, and sketches for magazines. As he moved from California to the east coast and then to Europe, he added new settings and people to his stories, but his Gold Rush stories are the ones that have been reprinted, changed, and praised the most. When he got back to San Francisco, he got married and started writing for the Golden Era. They released the first of his Condensed Novels, which were brilliant parodies of works by James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and others. He then got a job as a clerk at the U.S. branch mint, which gave him the freedom to be the editor of the Californian. He hired Mark Twain to write weekly pieces for the paper.
