Tales of the Argonauts

Bret Harte is the editor, writer and friend of whom Mark Twain wrote, "He trimmed and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkward utterer of coarse grotesqueness to a writer of paragraphs and chapters." Harte hired Twain to write a story a week for the "Californian" in 1865, a time when Twain was an unknown, relatively untried writer. The author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp," and "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" ended up creating a part of literary history that's still treasured today; perhaps it's the most enduring legacy of "California's Gold." "Tales of the Argonauts and Other Sketches" was first published in 1875, a time that Bret Harte was at his lowest literary and professional ebb. Harte had sought to lecture to paying audiences similarly to the incredibly successful tours of Mark Twain. But audiences didn't care for Harte's "dandified" appearance and lackluster in-person delivery. "Tales of the Argonauts" does not include "The Argonauts of '49," one of Harte's best-known tales. It does contain eight other tales told in Harte's inimitable style -- one which influenced generations of other writers of the American West, and which also document, largely, California history and the romance and adventure of the great "Gold Rush."