The Luck of Roaring Camp

by Bret Harte

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1868
Pages: 377

Read online EPUB Download Save

About this book

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.

About the author

Bret Harte

Bret Harte was an American short-story writer, poet, editor, and diplomat whose name became closely associated with literary depictions of California mining communities. As editor of the Overland Monthly, he published The Luck of Roaring Camp in 1868, the story that brought him broad recognition through its portrait of miners caring for an orphaned child.