Chapter Novelists And Humorists of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

and his famous declaration "There's millions in it!" Tom Sawyer appeared in 1876, -- a remarkable study of boy character, and reminiscent of the author's youth. Another European trip resulted in A Tramp Abroad (1880). Mr. Clemens then entered a province new to him and surprised his readers with The Prince and the Pauper (1882), a charmingly written romance for children. Life on the Mississippi (1883) was followed by another strong story of boy-life amid rude surroundings, Huckleberry Finn (1884). The broad burlesque, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, appeared in 1889. A serious novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and a historical romance seriously conceived, Joan of Arc (1896), increased the literary reputation of the author. Mr. Clemens was the author also of numerous short stories distinguished by their originality, rather in the vein of the satirist than in that of the mere humorist. His last work was a leisurely autobiography, the chapters of which were enlivened with the old-time humor, mellowed and unimpaired by age.

Bret Harte, 1839-1902.

The early work of Francis Bret Harte, in verse at least, was largely humorous. His first success was as a humorist. Born in Albany, New York, Harte's school training came to an end with his father's death in 1854, and the fifteen-year-old boy, who had already become a lover of Charles Dickens, and had also published in a New York newspaper some immature verse of his own, went with his mother to the Pacific coast. The first few years of his life in California brought him little except experience and intimate acquaintance with the picturesque characters that later figured to such advantage in his poems and tales. He was a school teacher at Sonora, in Calaveras Country; he tried placer mining in the gold-fields; he was a messenger in the employ of the Wells-Fargo Express Company; finally he became a compositor on a San Francisco paper, and began to write sketches for the Golden Era. In 1861, while holding an appointment as secretary to the superintendent of the San Francisco Mint, Harte became the editor of the newly founded Overland Monthly; and in the second number of that publication appeared his first noteworthy tale, The Luck of Roaring Camp. Then followed The Outcasts of Poker Flat, Tennessee's Partner, and the other narratives which contain his inimitable portraitures of the primitive western civilization. A little later, he wrote the first and best of his dialect poems, Plain Language from Truthful James, or, as it was afterwards entitled, The Heathen Chinee.

In 1870, Bret Harte left California. The popularity of his stories and poems was unbounded, especially throughout the East, and in England. His subsequent career was a disappointment. Such literary work as he undertook was desultory and either an imitation of his earlier efforts, or something inferior. He was given, in 1878, a minor German consulate and two years later was transferred to Glasgow. Of this office he was relieved in 1885. He continued to live in England and published numerous volumes which did not increase his fame. He died at the home of friends in Surrey, in 1902.