The Golden Era was a 19th-century San Francisco newspaper. The publication featured the writing of f.e.g. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard (writing at first as "Pip Pepperpod"), Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Adah Isaacs Menken, Ada Clare, Prentice Mulford, Dan De Quille, [1] J. S. Hittell and some women such as Frances Fuller Victor. [2] Stoddard recalled the newspaper as "the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains". [3]
The Golden Era began in 1852 as a weekly founded by Rollin M. Daggett and J. Macdonough Foard. [4] In 1860 it was sold to James Brooks and Joseph E. Lawrence. In the spring of 1860, they hired Bret Harte as editor and he focused on making it a more literary publication. [5] He had previously published his first poem in the Golden Era in 1857 [6] and, in October of that same year, his first prose piece on "A Trip Up the Coast". [7] Twain later recalled that, as an editor, Harte struck "a new and fresh and spirited note" which "rose above that orchestra's mumbling confusion and was recognizable as music". [8]
In the 1860s, New Yorker Charles Henry Webb became the highest paid contributor to the magazine. [9] In his regular column at the end of 1863, he announced that he and Harte "determined to start a paper" of their own. [10] The result was the Californian , begun in May 1864, with Webb as publisher and Harte as star contributor and occasional editor. [11] For the rest of the decade, The Golden Era and The Californian were significant rivals. [12]
Harr Wagner bought the weekly in 1882. In January 1886, Wagner changed to monthly publication, and hired Joaquin Miller as editor. Wagner married poet Madge Morris who was already a contributor, and her contributions became more numerous. In 1887, Wagner moved the periodical to San Diego, California—city officials enticed him with a $5,000 subsidy. [13]
The office for The Golden Era was located initially in the Golden Era Building on 742 Montgomery Street from 1852 until 1854; [14] [15] and later on Clay Street. [3]
Charles Farrar Browne was an American humor writer, better known under his nom de plume, Artemus Ward, which as a character, an illiterate rube with "Yankee common sense", Browne also played in public performances. He is considered to be America's first stand-up comedian. His birth name was Brown but he added the "e" after he became famous.
Bret Harte was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Cincinnatus Heine Miller, better known by his pen name Joaquin Miller, was an American poet, author, and frontiersman. He is nicknamed the "Poet of the Sierras" after the Sierra Nevada, about which he wrote in his Songs of the Sierras (1871).
Thomas Starr King, often known as Starr King, was an American Universalist and Unitarian minister, influential in California politics during the American Civil War, and Freemason. Starr King spoke zealously in favor of the Union and was credited by Abraham Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic. He is sometimes referred to as "the orator who saved the nation".
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the "Sweet Singer of California", she was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state.
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people and with few permanent ties. It involves musical, artistic, literary, or spiritual pursuits. In this context, bohemians may be wanderers, adventurers, or vagabonds. Bohemian is a 19th-century historical and literary topos that places the milieu of young metropolitan artists and intellectuals—particularly those of the Latin Quarter in Paris—in a context of poverty, hunger, appreciation of friendship, idealization of art and contempt for money. Based on this topos, the most diverse real-world subcultures are often referred to as "bohemian" in a figurative sense, especially if they show traits of a precariat.
The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the club has a membership of many local and global leaders, ranging from artists and musicians to businessmen. Membership is restricted to men only.
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. The narrator describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road."
Charles Warren Stoddard was an American author and editor best known for his travel books about Polynesian life.
The Overland Monthly was a monthly literary and cultural magazine, based in California, United States. It was founded in 1868 and published between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
"The Heathen Chinee", originally published as "Plain Language from Truthful James", is a narrative poem by American writer Bret Harte. It was published for the first time in September 1870 in the Overland Monthly. It was written as a parody of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon (1865), and satirized anti-Chinese sentiment in northern California.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" is a short story by American author Bret Harte. It was first published in the August 1868 issue of the Overland Monthly and helped push Harte to international prominence.
The Wiyot massacre refers to the incidents on February 26, 1860, at Tuluwat, near Eureka in Humboldt County, California. In coordinated attacks beginning at about 6 am, White settlers murdered 80 to 250 Wiyot people with axes, knives, and guns. The February 26 attacks were followed by similar bloody attacks on other Wiyot villages later that week.
Charles Henry Webb was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings.
James F. Bowman was a journalist and poet in Northern California, and a co-founder of the Bohemian Club. Bowman served on several newspapers in Placerville, Sacramento and San Francisco during a 24-year career. Through his contacts among San Francisco journalists, Bowman befriended Mark Twain, artist William Keith, critic Ambrose Bierce and a great many others.
The Californian was a San Francisco literary newspaper published weekly from May 28, 1864 until February 1, 1868.
Arthur Collins was Equerry and Comptroller for Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's 4th daughter and Gentleman Usher in the households of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. He attended Princess Louise in her role as the wife of John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, who was Governor General and Vice Regent of Canada between 1878 and 1883. Collins represented Princess Louise at the funerals of Lord Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, and William Ewart Gladstone, the two competing Prime Ministers during Queen Victoria's reign. Collins attended as a Gentleman Usher the coronation of King Edward VII and probably Victoria's funeral.
From 1862 to 1865, Samuel Clemens wrote for Virginia City, Nevada's leading newspaper, Territorial Enterprise. There, his literary skills were first realized and he first used the pen-name Mark Twain.
The Montgomery Block, also known as Monkey Block and Halleck's Folly, was a historic building active from 1853 to 1959, and was located in San Francisco, California. It was San Francisco's first fireproof and earthquake resistant building. It came to be known as a Bohemian center, from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th-century.