The Luck of Roaring Camp

Bret Harte more or less invented the popular image of the California Gold Rush with these sketches, first collected in 1870. In the title story, a rough mining camp of gamblers and hard cases is transformed when a baby is left in its care after the death of the camp’s only woman, and the men set about raising the child with unexpected tenderness. Other tales, including the much-anthologized The Outcasts of Poker Flat, follow gamblers, drifters, and outcasts whose gruff exteriors hide surprising decency. Harte mixed sentiment, irony, and frontier color into a formula that made him internationally famous and shaped the American Western for generations of writers who followed. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.