"Though I am generally placed at the head of my breed of scribblers in this part of the country," Mark Twain wrote from California in 1866, "the place properly belongs to Bret Harte." More than any other writer, Bret Harte was at the forefront of western American literature, paving the way for writers such as Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, Ina Coolbrith, Prentice Mulford, and Charles Warren Stoddard.
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings brings together not only Harte's best-known pieces, such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," but also the original transcription of the famous 1882 essay "The Argonauts of '49," as well as a selection of his poetry, lesser-known essays, and three of his Condensed Novels, which are notable for Harte's parodies of James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the first collection to feature selections that evenly cover the full scope of Harte's writing career.
