The luck of roaring camp, and other sketches

Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870. FIRST EDITION. Publisher’s cloth with gilt title and decoration on spine; front fly-leaf detached. Preserved in a clamshell box and slipcover with morocco spine label (author’s name misspelled “Bert”. Bookplate of J.A. Egan on the paste-down, ownership inscription by Milo Stillman dated March, 1948. A very good copy. First edition, first issue, without the story, “Brown of Calveras.” Harte’s work features a series of short stories of Western fiction detailing lifestyle in mid-nineteenth century gold-mining camps of California. It’s title story was originally published in the August, 1868 issue of The Overland Monthly, and then collected with other short stories, all of which were published at the same time as his poem, “The Heathen Chinee,” together skyrocketing him to an unforeseen level of notoriety.

Harte (1836-1902) is known for his writings on the romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. Throughout his travels from California to Europe, he greatly expanded the subject matter about which he wrote. His crisply observant perspective provided a deep influence on the American short story genre in the nineteenth century.

BAL, 7246; Grolier Club, One Hundred influential American books printed before 1900, 76; Zamorano Eighty, 40.