Bret Harte was an American author who is often credited as one of the early pioneers of the local-color movement in American fiction, which emphasized the dialect, folklore, and often nostalgia of a certain region or bygone era, much like the regionalism movement that would follow World War II. Born in Albany, New York, Harte grew up in Brooklyn, where he had only an intermittent education. Nonetheless, he loved reading and writing, and he published his first poem at the age of 11.
Like his future collaborator, Mark Twain, Harte frequently contributed to newspapers like the Northern Californian and Atlantic Monthly, often publishing his progressive ideas about race and tolerance in...
