Bret Harte
{{Short description|American fiction writer and poet (1836–1902)}}
{{about|the American author|the Canadian professional wrestler|Bret Hart|other uses|Bret Harte (disambiguation)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2024}}
{{Infobox writer
|name = Bret Harte
|image = Bret_Harte_by_Napoleon_Sarony.jpg
|caption = Bret Harte in 1872
|birth_date = {{Birth date|1836|8|25}}
|birth_place = Albany, New York
|death_date = {{Death date and age|1902|5|5|1836|8|25}}
|death_place = Camberley, England
|occupation = Author
|genre = Fiction, poetry
|spouse = Anna Griswold (m. ca. 1862–1902; his death)
|children= 4{{cite web |url=https://www.geni.com/people/Bret-Harte/6000000029423004929 |title=Bret Harte |website=Geni |date=October 28, 2018 |access-date=November 9, 2020}}
|signature = Signature of Bret Harte.jpg
|birth_name = Francis Brett Hart
}}
Bret Harte ({{IPAc-en|h|ɑːr|t}} {{respell|HART}}, born Francis Brett Hart, August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he also wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches.
Harte moved from California to the eastern U.S. and later to Europe. He incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been those most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.{{Cite web |title=American Passages: A Literary Survey |url=https://www.learner.org/series/american-passages-a-literary-survey/regional-realism/bret-harte-1836-1902/}}
Early life
Harte was born in 1836Some sources say he was born in 1837 or 1839. Even his gravestone has the wrong year, 1837. See also [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1970&dat=19360815&id=MZcoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgYGAAAAIBAJ&pg=2850,4089357 Bret Harte Birth Year Set as 1836], Berkeley Daily Gazette, August 15, 1936 in New York's capital city of Albany.Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 3. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}} He was named 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 was Bernard Hart, an Orthodox Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange.{{cite book|last=Kanfer|first=Stefan|title=A Summer World|year=1989|publisher=Farrar Straus Giroux|location=New York|isbn=978-0374271800|pages=40}} Bret's mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Ostrander Hart, was from the English and Dutch culture and raised her child in a Dutch Reformed church.{{Cite web |title=Bret HARTE Science & Magnet Cluster School |url=https://www.harte.cps.edu/history.html#:~:text=Bret%27s%20mother,%20Elizabeth%20Rebecca%20Ostrander,with%20his%20mother,%20a%20widow. |access-date=2022-12-02 |website=www.harte.cps.edu |archive-date=December 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221202142832/https://www.harte.cps.edu/history.html#:~:text=Bret%27s%20mother,%20Elizabeth%20Rebecca%20Ostrander,with%20his%20mother,%20a%20widow. |url-status=dead }} Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte.{{Cite web|url=https://www.enotes.com/topics/bret-harte|title=Bret Harte Biography |website=eNotes|access-date=2017-03-16}} Harte was of French Huguenot and Dutch ancestry and descended from prominent New York landowner Francis Rombouts.Merwin, Henry Childs. The Life of Bret Harte, page 8
An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend,{{Who|date=August 2022}} "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse.""Autumn Musings" is reported to have been published in the New York Sunday Atlas, according to Theodore Bryant Kingsbury, "Vanity of Earthly Things," Charlotte Observer (North Carolina), December 13, 1903, p. 14. The Atlas may have been one of the Albany newspapers using that title from 1843 to 1855.
Harte's formal schooling{{Where|date=August 2022}} ended when he was 13, in 1849.Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 4. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}}
Career in California
Harte moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist; he was also secretary of the San Francisco Mint.{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Harte, Francis Bret|volume=13|pages=31–32}} He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (now Arcata), a settlement on Humboldt Bay, as a tutor and school teacher, then a printer's devil on The Northern Californian,{{cite web |title=Susie Baker Fountain: Arcata Historian |url=https://library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/SusieBakerFountain.htm |website=Humboldt Room - HSU Library Special Collections |access-date=8 January 2023 |archive-date=January 8, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230108033619/https://library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/SusieBakerFountain.htm |url-status=dead }} and went on to reporting news, writing poems, and occasionally, acting editor, leaving after three years, from lynching threats for writing an editorial about the 26 February 1860 Wiyot massacre.{{cite web |title=Harte in Humboldt |url=https://www.humboldthistory.org/history-nuggets/2022/4/29/harte-in-humboldt |website=Humboldt County Historical Society |date=April 29, 2022 |access-date=8 January 2023}}
Union was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior.{{citation needed|date = November 2013}}
The Wells Fargo Messenger of July 1916 relates that after an unsuccessful attempt to make a living in the gold camps, Harte signed on as a messenger with Wells Fargo & Co. Express. He guarded treasure boxes on stagecoaches for a few months, then gave it up to become the schoolmaster at a school near the town of Sonora, in the Sierra foothills. He created his character Yuba Bill from his memory of an old stagecoach driver.
Among Harte's first literary efforts was a poem published in The Golden Era in 1857Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 6. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}} and, in October of that same year, his first prose piece on "A Trip Up the Coast".Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 48–49. {{ISBN|1-57806-253-5}} In the spring of 1860 he was hired as editor of The Golden Era, which he attempted to make into a more literary publication.Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 26–27. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}} Mark Twain later recalled that, as an editor, Harte struck "a new and fresh and spirited note" which "rose above that orchestra's mumbling confusion and was recognizable as music".Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 28. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}}
The 1860 massacre of between 80 and 200 Wiyot Indians at the village of Tuluwat (near Eureka in Humboldt County, California) was reported by Harte in San Francisco and New York. While serving as assistant editor of the Northern Californian,{{Cite news|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bret-Harte|title=Bret Harte|work=Encyclopædia Britannica|access-date=2017-08-21|language=en}} Harte was left in charge of the paper during the temporary absence of his boss, Stephen G. Whipple. Harte published a detailed account condemning the slayings, writing:
[A] more shocking and revolting spectacle was never exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people. Old women, wrinkled and decrepit, lay weltering in blood, their brains dashed out and dabbled with their long gray hair. Infants scarce a span long, with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds.
After he published the editorial, Harte's life was threatened, and he was forced to flee one month later. Harte quit his job and moved to San Francisco, where an anonymous letter published in a city paper describing widespread community approval of the massacre was attributed to him. In addition, no one was ever brought to trial, despite the evidence of a planned attack and of references to specific individuals, including a rancher named Larabee and other members of the unofficial militia called the Humboldt Volunteers.{{cite web|url=http://dscholar.humboldt.edu:8080/dspace/bitstream/2148/30/1/Crandell.pdf |title=Crandell |access-date=2009-06-28 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070807072025/http://dscholar.humboldt.edu:8080/dspace/bitstream/2148/30/1/Crandell.pdf |archive-date=August 7, 2007 |df=mdy }}
File:BretHarte-PaintedIn1884ByJohnPettie(1839-1893).jpg (1884){{cite web |author=Gerten-Jackson, Carol |url=http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/p/p-pettie1.htm |title= John Pettie: Portrait of Bret Harte |website=CGFA |access-date=2006-06-07 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060820195909/http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/p/p-pettie1.htm |archive-date=August 20, 2006 |df=mdy-all }}]]
Harte married Anna Griswold on August 11, 1862, in San Rafael, California.Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 64. {{ISBN|1-57806-253-5}} From the start, the marriage was rocky. Some suggested that she was consumed by extreme jealousy, while early Harte biographer Henry C. Merwin privately concluded that she was "almost impossible to live with".
The well-known minister Thomas Starr King recommended Harte to James T. Fields, editor of the prestigious magazine The Atlantic Monthly, which published Harte's first short story in October 1863.Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 59. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}} In 1864, Harte joined with Charles Henry Webb in starting a new literary journal called The Californian. He became friends with and mentored poet Ina Coolbrith.
In 1865, Harte was asked by bookseller Anton Roman to edit a book of California poetry; it was to be a showcase of the finest California writers. When the book, called Outcroppings, was published, it contained only 19 poets, many of them Harte's friends (including Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard). The book caused some controversy, as Harte used the preface as a vehicle to attack California's literature, blaming the state's "monotonous climate" for its bad poetry. While the book was widely praised in the East, many newspapers and poets in the West took umbrage at his remarks.
In 1868, Harte became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, published by Roman Anton with the intention of highlighting local writings.Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 149. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}} The Overland Monthly was more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. Harte's short story "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared in the magazine's second issue, propelling him to fame nationwide and in Europe.
When word of Charles Dickens's death reached Harte in July 1870, he immediately sent a dispatch across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming issue of the Overland Monthly for 24 hours so that he could compose the poetic tribute "Dickens in Camp".
Harte's fame increased with the publication of his satirical poem "Plain Language from Truthful James" in the September 1870 issue of the Overland Monthly.Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 188. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}} The poem became better known by its alternate title "The Heathen Chinee" after being republished in a Boston newspaper in 1871.Scott, David. China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008: 60–61. {{ISBN|978-0-7914-7627-7}} It was also quickly republished in a number of other newspapers and journals, including the New York Evening Post, the New York Tribune, the Boston Evening Transcript, the Providence Journal, the Hartford Courant, Prairie Farmer, and the Saturday Evening Post.Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 146. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}} The poem was a fictional representation of attacks on Chinese immigrants and Harte intended to the reader to sympathize with the victim, the character Ah Sin.{{Cite book |last=Crean |first=Jeffrey |title=The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History |date=2024 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-350-23394-2 |edition= |series=New Approaches to International History series |location=London, UK |pages=}}{{Rp|pages=23-24}} Instead, readers identified with the attacker, the character William Nye.{{Rp|page=24}} Harte later referred to the piece as "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote."{{Rp|page=24}}
Like Plain Language from Truthful James, Harte's 1874 short story Wan Lee, the Pagan also sought to undermine stereotypes about Chinese immigrants and to portray white Americans as the true savages.{{Rp|page=24}}
File:Bret Harte by Napoleon Sarony, c. 1870, albumen silver print, from the National Portrait Gallery - NPG-NPG 79 39Harte-000001.jpg (c. 1870). Housed at the National Portrait Gallery (United States)]]
Move east
Harte was determined to pursue his literary career and traveled back east with his family in 1871 to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time".Scharnhorst, Gary (2001). "Introduction". In Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, p. xvi. New York: Penguin Books. {{ISBN|0-14-043917-X}}. His popularity waned and, by the end of 1872, he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work or republish old and delivering lectures about the gold rush. The winter of 1877–78 was particularly hard for him and his family. He recalled it as a "hand-to-mouth life" and wrote to his wife Anna, "I don't know—looking back—what ever kept me from going down, in every way, during that awful December and January".Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 133. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}}
Some time between 1872 and 1881, Harte rented the Willows, a Morristown, New Jersey mansion then owned by Union general and author Joseph Warren Revere.{{cite web |last1=Strathearn |first1=Nancy |date=August 16, 1990 |title=National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Fosterfields (Boundary Increase) |url={{NRHP url|id=91000478}} |publisher=National Park Service}} With {{NRHP url|id=91000478|photos=y|title=accompanying 28 photos}} Harte's time in Morristown inspired him to write an 1877 historical romance novel, Thankful Blossom.{{Cite web |title=The Project Gutenberg E-text of Thankful Blossom, by Bret Harte |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2177/2177-h/2177-h.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220330131818/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2177/2177-h/2177-h.htm |archive-date=March 30, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-30 |website=www.gutenberg.org}}
After months of soliciting for such a role, Harte accepted the position of United States Consul in the town of Krefeld, Germany, in May 1878. Mark Twain had been a friend and supporter of Harte's until a substantial falling out, and he had previously tried to block any appointment for Harte. In a letter to William Dean Howells, he complained that Harte would be an embarrassment to the United States because, as he wrote, "Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward, a Jeremy Diddler, he is brim full of treachery... To send this nasty creature to puke upon the American name in a foreign land is too much".Scharnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 139. {{ISBN|0-8061-3254-X}} Eventually, Harte was given a similar role in Glasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London. Throughout his time in Europe, he regularly wrote to his wife and children and sent monthly financial contributions. He declined to invite them to join him, nor did he return to the United States to visit them. His excuses were usually related to money. During the 24 years that he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. Among his writings of this time were parodies and satires of other writers, including "The Stolen Cigar-Case" featuring ace detective "Hemlock Jones", which Ellery Queen praised as "probably the best parody of Sherlock Holmes ever written".Davies, David Stuart (1998). Shadows of Sherlock Holmes, p. xvii. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. {{ISBN|1-85326-744-9}}.
He died in Camberley, England, in 1902 of throat cancer and is buried at Frimley.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=vfT5ieZw1WcC&dat=19020506&printsec=frontpage&hl=en Newburgh Daily Journal], May 6, 1902. His wife Anna (née Griswold) Harte died on August 2, 1920. The couple lived together only 16 of the 40 years that they were married.Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 243–244. {{ISBN|1-57806-253-5}}
Reception
In 1878, Andrew Carnegie praised Harte in Round the World as uniquely American, likely alluding to his regionalism:{{blockquote|text="A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet."[http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext04/7rwrl10.htm Andrew Carnegie, Round the World, The Project Gutenberg EBook] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090209001311/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext04/7rwrl10.htm |date=February 9, 2009 }}}}
Rudyard Kipling also showed himself to be an admirer of Harte's writing. In From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel,[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32977 From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel by Rudyard Kipling - FROM SEA TO SEA No. XXIII How I got to San Francisco and took Tea with the Natives there : Project Gutenberg] while in San Francisco Kipling wrote:{{blockquote|text="A reporter asked me what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was hallowed ground to me because of Bret Harte. That was true: 'Well,' said the reporter, 'Bret Harte claims California, but California don't claim Bret Harte.{{nbsp}}...' He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a great deal less than the man."}}
Mark Twain characterized him and his writing as insincere. Writing in his autobiography four years after Harte's death, Twain criticized the miners' dialect used by Harte, claiming that it never existed outside of his imagination. Additionally, Twain accused Harte of "borrowing" money from his friends with no intention of repaying it and of financially abandoning his wife and children. He referred repeatedly to Harte as "The Immortal Bilk".Krauth, Leland. Mark Twain & Company: Six Literary Relations. University of Georgia Press, 2003: 23. {{ISBN|978-0820325408}}
Selected works
File:19th-century-binding-bret-harte.jpg
File:BretHarteGravestoneFrimley.jpg, Surrey, England]]
File:BretHarteGravestoneInscriptionFrimley.jpg
- Outcroppings (1865), editor
- Condensed Novels and Other Papers (1867)
- Tennessee's Partner (short story; 1869){{cite journal |last1=Coates |first1=Frank |title=The early history of Tuolumne County, California |url=https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/946/ |journal=University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |publisher= University of the Pacific (United States) |access-date=8 January 2023 |pages=139 |date=1 January 1934}}
- The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870)
- "Plain Language from Truthful James", aka "The Heathen Chinee" (1870)
- Poems (1871)
- The Heart's Foundation (1873)
- The Tales of the Argonauts (1875)
- Gabriel Conroy (1876)
- Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876)
- Thankful Blossom (1877)
- Drift from Two Shores (1878)
- An Heiress of Red Dog, and Other Tales (1879)
- Flip and Found at Blazing Star (1882)
- By Shore and Sedge (1885)
- A Millionaire of Rough-And-Ready and Devil's Ford (1887)
- The Crusade of the Excelsior (1887)
- The Argonauts of North Liberty (1888)
- Cressy (1889)
- A First Family of Tasajara (1892)
- Colonel Starbottle's Client, and some other people (1892)
- A Protégée of Jack Hamlin's; and Other Stories (1894)
- Barker's Luck etc. (1896)
- Tales of Trail and Town (1898)
- Stories in Light and Shadow (1898)
- Under the Red-Woods (1901)
- Her Letter, His Answer, and Her Last Letter{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/HerLetterHisAnswerAndHerLastLetter|title=Her Letter, His Answer, and Her Last Letter|last1=Harte|first1=Bret|last2=Keller|first2=Arthur I. [Illustrator]|publisher=Houghton, Mifflin & Company|year=1905}} (1905)
= Parodies =
Harte's short story collections Condensed Novels (1867) and Condensed Novels: Second Series New Burlesques (1902) are parodies of contemporaneous writers and novels.
class="wikitable" | ||||
Parody | Named author | Parodied author | Parodied novel | Remarks |
---|---|---|---|---|
Rupert the Resembler | A-th-y H-pe | Anthony Hope | The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau | |
The Stolen Cigar Case | A. Co—n D—le | Arthur Conan Doyle | Sherlock Holmes stories | |
Golly and the Christian or The Minx and the Manxman | H-ll C—ne | Hall Caine | The Christian and The Manxman | |
Dan'l Borem | E. N-s W-t-t | Edward Noyes Westcott | David Harum | |
Stories Three | R-dy-d K-pl-g | Rudyard Kipling | Soldiers Three | In the second story, "A Private's Honor", the three characters Mulledwiney, Bleareyed, and Otherwise parody Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris of Soldiers Three. The story title, "A Private's Honor", references "His Private Honour" of Many Inventions, another Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris story. |
"Zut-Ski" The Problem of a Wicked Feme Sole | M-r-e C-r-lli | Marie Corelli | Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul |
Dramatic and musical adaptations
- Several film versions of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" have been made, including one in 1937 with Preston Foster and another in 1952 with Dale Robertson.
- Tennessee's Partner (1955) with John Payne and Ronald Reagan was based on the story of the same name.
- Paddy Chayefsky's treatment of the film version of Paint Your Wagon seems to borrow from "Tennessee's Partner": two close friends—one named "Pardner"—share the same woman. The Spaghetti Western Four of the Apocalypse is based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Luck of Roaring Camp".
- The Soviet movie Armed and Dangerous ({{langx|ru|Вооружён и очень опасен}}, 1977) is based on Gabriel Conroy and another of Harte's stories.
- Operas based on "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" include those by Samuel Adler{{cite web |url=http://dram.nyu.edu/dram/note.cgi?id=8801 |title=The Database of Recorded American Music |access-date=2006-08-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060518194308/http://dram.nyu.edu/dram/note.cgi?id=8801 |archive-date=May 18, 2006 |df=mdy-all }} and by Stanford Beckler.[http://pikappalambda.capital.edu/organization.html Organization] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060718134915/http://pikappalambda.capital.edu/organization.html|date=July 18, 2006}} at pikappalambda.capital.edu
- The 1889 short story Salomy Jane's Kiss and 1910 novel of the same name have been filmed many times:
- Salomy Jane (1914 film)
- Salomy Jane (1923 film)
- Wild Girl (1932)
- The actor Craig Hill was cast as Harte in the 1956 episode, "Year of Destiny", on the syndicated anthology series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. The "year of destiny" is 1857, when Harte arrived in California. First a stagecoach guard, then a newspaper editor and schoolteacher, he slowly finds fame as a western writer.{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0556936/?ref_=ttep_ep21|title=Year of Destiny on Death Valley Days|publisher=Internet Movie Database|access-date=October 30, 2018}}
- The popular 1975 Disney film "The Apple Dumpling Gang," based on the 1971 "novel of the same name" by "Jack Bickham," is full of characters and situations inspired by Harte's writings. Among them are a "Tomboy" Stage Driver, her Southern Gentleman father, a Roving Gambler trusted with the care of small children, a world weary Sherriff who also serves as Justice of the Peace, and two bumbling but lovable outlaws. The film was a major hit for Disney.
Legacy
- Bret Harte Memorial in San Francisco{{cite web|title=Bret Harte Memorial, (sculpture)|url=http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siartinventories&uri=full=3100001~!318520~!0#focus|website=Save Outdoor Sculpture!|publisher=Smithsonian American Art Museum|access-date=May 9, 2012}}
- There is a Bret Harte House at the Cal Poly Humboldt Journalism Department in Arcata, California{{Cite web |title=Journalism & Mass Communication |url=https://journalism.humboldt.edu/ |access-date=2023-07-17 |website=journalism.humboldt.edu}}
- Bret Harte, California, a census-designated place (CDP) in Stanislaus County
- Twain Harte, a CDP in Tuolumne County, California, named after both Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
- The Mark Twain Bret Harte Historic Trail (Marker Number 431 erected in 1948 by the California Centennial Commission), also named after both writers.{{cite web|url=http://www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=2304|website=HMDB.org|title=Mark Twain Bret Harte Historic Trail|access-date=May 6, 2015|archive-date=September 28, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150928193739/http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=2304|url-status=dead}}
- Bret Harte Village in the Gold River community of Sacramento County. Sacramento, California
- Bret Harte Court, a street in Sacramento, California
- Bret Harte Library, a public library in Long Beach, California
- Bret Harte Hall, Roaring Camp Railroads Felton, California
- Bret Harte High School in Angels Camp, California is named after him.
- Bret Harte Lane in Humboldt Hill, California.
- Bret Harte Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois
- Bret Harte Preparatory Middle School (Vermont Vista) South Los Angeles, California
- Bret Harte Middle School in San Jose, California
- Bret Harte Middle School in Oakland, California
- Bret Harte Middle School in Hayward, California
- Bret Harte Elementary in Corcoran, California
- Bret Harte Street in Baldwin, New York
- Bret Harte Elementary in San Francisco, California
- Bret Harte Elementary in Burbank, California
- Bret Harte Elementary in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
- Bret Harte Elementary in Sacramento, California
- Bret Harte Elementary School in Modesto, California{{cite web|url=http://mcs.monet.k12.ca.us/schools/MCSPages/SchoolInfoPage.aspx?schoolnumber%3D014 |title=Basic page |access-date=2014-08-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140821114141/http://mcs.monet.k12.ca.us/schools/MCSPages/SchoolInfoPage.aspx?schoolnumber=014 |archive-date=August 21, 2014 |df=mdy }}
- A community called The Shores of Poker Flat, California claims to have been the location of Poker Flat, although it is usually accepted that the story takes place further north.{{Citation needed|date=August 2020}}
- Bret Harte Road in Frimley (the town in which Harte was buried) is named after him.
- Bret Harte Place in San Francisco, California is named after him.
- Bret Harte Lane, Bret Harte Road, Bret Harte Park, Bret Ave and Harte Ave in San Rafael, California.
- Bret Harte Terrace in San Francisco.
- Bret Harte Road in Berkeley, California.
- Bret Harte Road in Redwood City, California.
- Bret Harte Road in Angels Camp, California.
- Bret Harte Road and Bret Harte Drive in Murphys, California.
- Bret Harte Avenue in Reno, Nevada.
- Bret Harte Alley in Arcata, California.
- Bret Harte Park in Danville, California.
- In 1987 Harte appeared on a $5 U.S. Postage stamp, as part of the "Great Americans series" of issues.Scott catalog # 2196.
References
{{Reflist}} The Outcasts of Poker Flat
External links
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{{Wikiquote}}
{{Wikisource author}}
- [http://westernamericanliterature.com/bret-harte/ Western American Literature Journal: Bret Harte]
- {{cite journal|last=Brooks|first=Noah|date=September 1902|title=Bret Harte: A Biographical And Critical Sketch|journal=Overland Monthly, and Out West Magazine|volume=XL|issue=3 |pages=201–207|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1gYNAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA3-PA201|access-date=2009-08-15}}
- [http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/harte_bret_bibliography.html Complete bibliography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110911081812/http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/harte_bret_bibliography.html |date=September 11, 2011 }}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20111008021613/http://www.alamo.edu/sac/english/bailey/harte.htm Online Bret Harte bibliography]
- [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=harte&amode=words&title=&tmode=words Bret Harte Etexts]
- {{Gutenberg author |id=593}}
- {{FadedPage|id=Harte, Bret|name=Bret Harte|author=yes}}
- {{Internet Archive author |sname=Bret Harte}}
- {{Librivox author |id=40}}
- [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf2s2002pn/ Guide to the Bret Harte Collection] at The Bancroft Library
- {{IMDb name|366610}}
- [https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/3/resources/1370 Bret Harte letters collection] at the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College Special Collections
- [https://oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;Institution=California%20State%20Library::California%20History%20Room;idT=001528530 Bret Harte letters and postal cover, 1874-1986]. California State Library, California History Room.
- [http://www.eng-poetry.ru/english/Poet.php?PoetId=342 Poems by Francis Bret Harte] at English Poetry
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20210522190421/https://oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-592 |Oxford Research Encyclopedias]
{{Bret Harte}}
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Category:Writers from Albany, New York
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Category:American satirical poets
Category:American people of Dutch descent
Category:American people of French descent
Category:American people of German-Jewish descent
Category:Deaths from throat cancer in England
Category:American male dramatists and playwrights
Category:19th-century American poets
Category:19th-century American dramatists and playwrights