Bret Harte

Bret Harte made the California gold rush into literature — The Luck of Roaring Camp gave America its gamblers, its whores with consciences, and its snowbound miners, and made him the best-paid writer in the country at thirty-three. The fame did not last: he took a consulship, drifted to London, and never went home, writing mining stories for twenty-four years from Kensington.