Short stories
The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches
Bret Harte · 1870
Opening lines
There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In a gold-prospectors' camp where a hundred or so men and a single woman live, a child is born and his mother dies in childbirth; the miners decide to raise him and begin, without admitting it to themselves, to wash, to stop swearing, to whitewash and paper the cabin. Elsewhere, a secret committee drives a professional gambler, two women of ill repute and a drunkard out of a mining town, and the snow catches them on the road. Elsewhere still, a man comes before an improvised court to ransom his partner, caught after robbing a traveller. Sketches of San Francisco close the book.
Context
The story that gives the volume its title appeared in August 1868 in the second issue of the Overland Monthly, which the author had just taken over, and made him famous across the country. The book followed in April 1870 from Fields, Osgood, in Boston; one story, Brown of Calaveras, was added to later printings. The same year, a comic poem by the author became a sensation. In 1871, his publishers offered him ten thousand dollars for twelve pieces a year, the highest sum ever offered to an American writer; by the end of the following year, he had no contract.
Who it is for
A collection of short stories, to be read separately, followed by sketches about San Francisco. The first French translations, partial ones, date from 1873.
Prizes and reception
The volume that made its author's reputation; two years earlier, according to his translator Amédée Pichot, his name was still unknown in Europe.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.