SOURCE: Nissen, Axel. “Lord of Romance: Bret Harte's Later Career Reconsidered.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 29, no. 3 (spring 1997): 64-81.

In the following excerpt, Nissen reevaluates the later stages of Harte's literary career.

I see no limit to the future in art of a country which has already given us Emerson, that master of moods, and those two lords of romance, Poe and Bret Harte.

—Oscar Wilde to A. P. T. Elder, 1885

I

Nothing is more indicative of the condescending attitude taken by most biographers and critics toward the last quarter century of Bret Harte's writing career than the titles of the chapters dealing with these years. George R. Stewart entitles one of the later chapters of his biography “Grub Street De Luxe.” In the popular biography written by Richard O'Conner in 1966, two of the chapters dealing with Harte's years in England are headed “A New Resident in Grub Street...