... Gold Rush and placing California on the world's literary map. The challenge he faced was how to represent a lawless and uncivilised phase of American history that would not only capture the imagination of the middle-class but also to be socially acceptable. Harte decided that the best way to overcome this problem was to import romantic situations and plot structures in an unmapped and unknown landscape. Hid Californian mythology was founded on ideas taken from the Bible, from Greek legend, Washington Irving, Walter Scott and Dickens. Harte's sentiment is obvious, yet restrained and his pathos is not paraded and insisted upon as Dickens's was. However, even though there is a variety of incident and going on in his stories, there is still a controlling unity of theme and tone. In 1849 the discovery of gold was made and this increased the movement to the west even more. People flocked to ...

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