Harte, Francis

BRET, novelist and poet; born at Albany, N. Y., Aug. 25, 1839. He went to California (1856), engaged in digging gold, teaching school, and in the expre busine ; entered the office of The Golden Era as a type-setter, and became editor of a literary weekly, The Californian; secretary of the U. S. branch mint, in San Francisco (1864); removed to New York city (1871); was appointed U. S. consul at Crefeld, Germany (1878), and filled a similar office in Glasgow from 1880 to 1885; has since resided in London. He was the founder of the Overland Monthly, and it was to this magazine that he contributed his famous stories: The Luck of Roaring Camp, and the Outcasts of Poker Flat; also his popular poem, The Heathen Chinee. Among his novels are. Echoes of the Foot Hills; Tales of the Argonauts; On the Frontier; A Phyllis of the Sierras, .