Bret Harte (1837–1902)

A young man follows the Gold Rush to California. When the expected fortune fails to materialize, he drifts to a small town somewhere in the state which is apparently populated by hillbillies who speak in dialect. There he takes on the role of schoolmaster. Cressy is a 16 year old girl/woman who returns to the school tricked out in town clothes from Sacramento after breaking her engagement. She is a vacuous individual. Her father is a shrewd oaf in search of "kam" (he pronounces "calm" the show more Scots way) and her mother, described as man-like, has few thoughts in her head beyond vendettas. The schoolmaster is baffled by the whole thing. Cressy's extreme vapidity made me fear that it was contagious; just reading her dialogue, I felt my brains try to leak out my ears. I did not finish the book. show less

I was ready to skim through this and discard it, thinking that I didn't really like Bret Harte's writing from a couple of other stories of his I have read. Also, the first story would trigger any modern, sensitive reader who couldn't tolerate the views of races and genders from another century. However, it wasn't very long before I was pulled into the stories by Mr. Harte's sly humor and beautifully descriptive writing. He draws the landscape and his characters with a master's touch. When I show more read about a storm, or the sky and weather in California referred to as "earthquake weather" I was there, drenched in rain, or feeling the heaviness of the atmosphere. His was not the over-blown flowery language of many Nineteenth century writers, it was sharp and delightful. I consumed each story like a bonbon, tasting the differences, appreciating the sweetness unique to itself. I believe that I enjoy Harte's writing and humor as much as, or more than Mark Twain. There isn't the bitter edge to Harte's outlook on the world. He sees mankind's foibles without seeming to hate mankind.

The stories do not all take place in California, but my favorite two at the end, "The Mystery at the Hacienda" and "Chu-Chu" do. They are written to be in the time of California when the Americans from the east began to arrive and mingle with the Spanish Dons.

For my taste, this is a perfect short-story collection. Variety, light-hearted, not every tale ends happily but the ending seems just or reasonable. None leave you feeling that the writer got tired of the story and didn't know how to end it. show less

i guess the five stars says at least two things about me, mainly, i was born some 150 years from my literary time, and i like natural writing, or, if you will, pointillistic word painting.and i love harte's sense of humour. like thisw: "they somehow apprehended they were being drawn into some form of misbehaviuor , so they looked at each other, and then with perfect freemasonry, stayed dumb." God, that had me rolling with laughter. lToo, love was more serious then. It was not counted on show more lightly. In fact, at the frontier, it was rarely counted on at all. show less

Originally published in 1886, The Queen of the Pirate Isle is a short story set in and around a mining camp in gold-rush California - a milieu that features in almost all of Bret Harte's work. Illustrated in this 1931 edition by the fabulous Kate Greenaway, for whom Britain's premier illustrator's award is named, it seems at first glance to be a story for children.

The four young protagonists - imaginative Polly, her cousin Hickory Hunt, their Chinese "page" Wan Lee, and neighbor-boy Patsey - show more are all children, and Harte here relates their adventures playing pirate. Unfortunately, the narrative is somewhat muddled, with a "realistic" runaway-adventure being followed by a (possible) dream sequence, morphing into an imaginary/fantastic adventure, which turns out to be "real" play. The connection between these various scenes is not always clear, and the language is rather dense. I find it hard to imagine that young readers, in Harte's day or in our own, would find this narrative appealing, leading me to suspect that this is an adult story presented here as a children's book because its protagonists are young.

Leaving aside the question of the intended audience for The Queen of the Pirate Isle, Harte's narrative is also marred by his racist portrayal of Wan Lee, who speaks in the regrettable dialect reserved for "Oriental" characters in nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature. If I were rating this book based solely upon the text, this combination of unappealing story and anachronistic social themes would probably result in a single star.

Fortunately (or not, as the case may be), I did find Kate Greenaway's illustrations absolutely delightful, and have therefore given this an added star. All in all, this is not a title I would recommend to readers either young or old, although Greenaway devotees will no doubt get something out of the experience. show less