Audiobook · read by volunteers
Selected Stories of Bret Harte
Bret Harte (1836–1902)
Read by Gesine, Theo Bacher, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), Robert Beach, Sibella Denton, Heidi Onestone, Anna Simon, cucciasv, Geoff Cowgill, Katie Gibboney · 28 chapters · 12 h 46
About the book
Bret Harte put the California gold rush on the literary map. His stories take place in rough mining camps, among gamblers, outcasts and prospectors, and they find unexpected tenderness and decency in the most unlikely places. Here are some of his best-known tales, including The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat and Miggles. Harte’s writing is vivid, humorous and sentimental by turns, and he treats his characters with a mixture of irony and affection. The collection also includes an introduction to set the stories in context. Twenty-eight recordings, nearly thirteen hours, in the company of a storyteller who made the American West a subject for fiction. Humour, danger and surprising kindness mingle in these tales, which are well suited to a long evening of listening.
Introduction
Bret Harte (25 August 1836 - 6 May 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. He gained a wide reputation with short stories set in the mining camps of the gold rush, and his work was a significant influence on the development of the Western as a genre and of regional writing in the United States.
His stories typically draw on the contrast between the roughness of their settings and the unexpected goodness or sentiment of the characters. Gamblers, outcasts, miners and drifters are treated sympathetically, and the narrator often steps back with a smile. This approach was fresh in its time, and readers on both sides of the Atlantic found it appealing.
This is a selection rather than a complete edition. It opens with an introduction and then presents stories one by one, among them The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat and Miggles. Readers should be aware that the attitudes to some groups of people found in nineteenth-century Westerns reflect their period.
The recording was made by LibriVox volunteers and has twenty-eight files, with a total length of about twelve hours and forty-five minutes. It will suit anyone who likes short stories, who enjoys the history of the American West or who is curious about how that part of the country first entered literature. The stories can be heard separately, in whichever order pleases, and several of them are still among the most frequently anthologised pieces of American short fiction.
Public domain
Bret Harte died in 1902: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text