Barksdale is a Ph.D. candidate in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University and teaches at Owens Community College. In the following essay, he argues that Harte satirizes conventional ideas about frontier life in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat. ..

During the late 1860s, Bret Harte was widely regarded as one of America's most promising authors. Such tales of life during the California Gold Rush as "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "The Luck of Roaring Camp," and "Tennessee's Partner" were applauded for exploring the romance and adventure of   recent American history. Harte's greatest gift was considered to be a masterful ability to create setting by employing local color and regional dialects. Although his detractors complain that the author's depictions of life in the mining camps and gold fields are riddled with inaccuracies, one cannot deny that Harte's style was a powerful influence on subsequent fiction...