Bret Harte

http://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/cdm/singleitem/collect...

Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, fiction, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. As he moved from California to the eastern U.S. to Europe, he incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.

Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, on August 25, 1836. He was named Francis Brett Hart after his great-grandfather, Francis Brett. When he was young his father, Henry, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Henry's father – Bret's grandfather – was Bernard Hart, an Orthodox Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange. Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte