[Gutenberg 12419] • Frontier Stories

• Two of American author Bret Harte’s western short story collections are bound together in this Kindle edition, including: The Outcasts of Poker Flat & a second collection entitled Frontier Stories

The Outcasts of Poker Flat & Other Stories (1868)

The Outcasts of Poker Flat was the inspiration behind several Hollywood films including productions in 1937 and 1952, and spaghetti western Four of the Apocalypse is based on The Outcasts of Poker Flat and The Luck of Roaring Camp and there are even operas based on The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

The Luck of Roaring Camp, first published in 1868, involves a woman who dies while giving birth to a boy in a 19th-century gold prospecting camp. He is raised by the men of Roaring Camp, who name him Thomas Luck. They try to refrain from gambling and fighting, but how long can their resolution last?

Frontier Stories (1887)

Seven more stories of America’s Wild West including Flip: A California Romance, Found at Blazing Star, In the Carquinez Woods, At the Mission of San Carmel, A Blue Grass Penelope, Left Out on Lone Star Mountain, and A Ship of '49.

About The Author

Francis Bret Harte (1836 –1902), born in Albany, New York, was an American author and poet, best known for his stories about pioneering life in California. Harte’s grandfather was one of the founders of the New York Stock Exchange.

Hart moved to California in 1853 and worked as a miner, teacher and journalist. He lived in a northern California coastal town and later in his life Harte was appointed United States Consul in Germany and Glasgow. He settled in London and continued his writing career throughout his life, before dying in Camberley, England, in 1902 of throat cancer.

Andrew Carnegie praised Bret Harte as uniquely American:

"A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet."

Titles in the Bret Harte: American Western Classics Series -- which covers much of his writing in the pre-World War I period -- are available through Amazon and include Volumes I – 15:

1\. The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Luck of Roaring Camp & Other Stories (1899)

2\. Frontier Stories (1887)

3\. Three Partners, or The Big Strike on Heavy Hill (1897)

4\. The Twins of Table Mountain (1879)

5\. On the Frontier (1884)