Regional Writing

Bret Harte
Edward Eggleston
Lew Wallace
Sidney Lanier
Joel Chandler Harris
George Washington
Cable

Bret Harte (1836-1902)



Born in 1836 in Albany, New York.



The family moved to Oakland,

California in 1853.



Harte taught for a while, and also

worked in the mining industry.



The weekly newspaper Northern

Californian was Harte's first

exposure to journalism, editing,

and writing.



San Francisco: Harte worked as a

typesetter and contributed

poems, articles, and short stories

for the journal The Golden Era.



Much of his work was based on

life in the Californian mining

camps.

Harte

cont.



Editor of the literary journal The

Overland Monthly where his famous

stories of "The Luck of Roaring

Camp" (1870) were published. They

brought him widespread fame. Mark

Twain learned the newspaper world

from him.



Plain Language from Truthful James

(1870) followed.



He and his family decided to head

east again and settled in Boston.

Atlantic Monthly had contracted

him for a year's worth of writing

with an advance of $10,000.

Harte and Twain in Hartford

1876

Bret Harte collaborated
with Mark Twain on the
play Ah Sin, a comedy-
drama.
Twain once said:
"Well, Bret came down
to Hartford and we
talked it over, and then
Bret wrote it while I
played billiards, but of
course I had to go over
it to get the dialect
right. Bret never did
know anything about
dialect."

Harte cont.

Harte mastered the genre of gold rush fiction,

capturing the corruption and greed of the wild

new frontier lands.



Drift from Two Shores (1878),



Poetical Works (1880),



In the Carquinez Woods (1883),



Maruja (1885),



Ward of the Golden Gate (1890),



Under the Redwoods (1901)

Harte cont.

His stories served as the prototypes of all the

“Westerns” with all the stock characters:



the pretty New England schoolmistress,



the sheriff and his posse,



the bad man,



the gambler,



the heroic stage driver,



the harlot with the heart of gold

Edward Eggleston

(1837-1902)



Born in Indiana.



A Bible agent and Methodist

preacher.



Editor of the National Sunday School

Teacher and other New York City

newspapers.



In 1880 Eggleston began to focus on

historical studies.



The Beginners of a Nation (1896) and

The Transit of Civilization (1901)



Planned a series titled History of Life

in the United States; Important as

pioneer studies in social history.



The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871),

one of the first novels to exploit the

dialect and local color of the Midwest.

Lew Wallace (1827-

1905)



Born in Indiana.



Served as an officer in the

Mexican War (1846-1848) and the

American Civil War (1861-1865).



Governor of the territory of New

Mexico from 1878 to 1881 and

minister to Turkey from 1881 to

1885.



Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

(1880) won him a worldwide

reputation. A play (1899) and two

motion pictures (1926 and 1959)

have been based on the book.



The Fair God (1873)



The Prince of India (1893).

Sidney Lanier

(1842-1881)



Born in Macon, Georgia, and
educated at Oglethorpe
College.



He served in the Confederate
army during the Civil War.



1873 he became a flutist in
the Peabody Symphony
Orchestra of Baltimore,
Maryland, (a musical
prodigy).



1879 he was appointed
lecturer in English at Johns
Hopkins University.

Lanier cont.



His poetry is noted for its musical

quality and its indictment of the social

and economic evils in the South.



His best-known poems:

“Corn” (1875), “The Symphony”

(1875), “Song of the Chattahoochee”

(1877), “The Revenge of Hamish”

(1878), “The Marshes of Glynn”

(1879), and “A Ballad of Trees and the

Master” (1880).



Science of English Verse (1880), a

study of the relationship between

poetry and music.

Joel Chandler Harris

(1848-1908)



Born in Eatonton, Georgia



Worked for different newspapers in

Georgia and Louisiana.



Uncle Remus, His Songs and His

Sayings (1880),



Nights with Uncle Remus (1883),



Free Joe and Other Georgian

Sketches (1887),



Uncle Remus and His Friends

(1892),



Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit

(1906).



Harris was one of the first American

authors to use dialect.



An important record of black oral

folktales in the South.

George Washington Cable

(1844-1925)



Born in New Orleans, Louisiana.



Served in the Confederate army

during the American Civil War

(1861-1865).



Old Creole Days (1879),



The Creoles of Louisiana (1884),



The Silent South (1885),



The Negro Question (1890),



The Cavalier (1901),



The Flower of the Chapdelaines (1918).



The folkways of the French speaking Negroes, the

patois of the ruling class, the Acadians.

Cable and Twain

"Cable had been scouting the country
alone for three years with readings
from his novels, and he had been a
good reader in the beginning, for he
had been born with a natural talent for
it, but unhappily he prepared himself
for his public work by taking lessons
from a teacher of elocution, and so by
the time he was ready to begin his
platform work he was so well and
thoroughly educated that he was
merely theatrical and artificial and not
half as pleasing and entertaining to a
house as he had been in the splendid
days of his ignorance". -- Mark Twain

Sam Clemens with
George Washington Cable
during the Twins of Genius
tour.