The Luck of Roaring Camp

"There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire settlement...” 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' is a short story by Bret Harte, first published in the August 1868 issue of Overland Monthly. It narrates the hard-luck life of a baby boy, Thomas Luck, born an orphan in a gold mining camp in California and raised by a grizzled bunch of hard-hearted miners. This story helped launch Bret Harte's international prominence as a writer, and contains a veritable cornucopia of descriptive words—a great tool for learning and expanding your literary horizons. Bret Harte (1836–1902), born as Francis Brett Hart in Albany, NY, was an American short story writer and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction. An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Today he is best remembered by his works 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat', 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' (1868), and 'Selected Stories of Bret Harte' (1870).