



Produced by Donald Lainson





COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS

By Bret Harte


"Argonaut Edition" Of The Works Of Bret Harte, Vol. 8

P. F. Collier & Son

New York

Copyright 1882, 1896, And 1902

By Houghton, Mifflin & Company




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Although Bret Harte's name is identified with Californian life, it was
not till he was fifteen that the author of "Plain Language from Truthful
James" saw the country of his adoption.  Francis Bret Harte, to give the
full name which he carried till he became famous, was born at Albany,
New York, August 25, 1839.  He went with his widowed mother to
California in 1854, and was thrown as a young man into the hurly-burly
which he more than any other writer has made real to distant and later
people.  He was by turns a miner, school-teacher, express messenger,
printer, and journalist.  The types which live again in his pages are
thus not only what he observed, but what he himself impersonated in his
own experience.

He began trying his pen in Th