![The Golden Era 1865](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/The_Golden_Era_1865.jpg)
''The Golden Era'' was a 19th-century
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
. The publication featured the writing of f.e.g.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), 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 p ...
,
Bret Harte
Bret Harte (; born Francis Brett Hart; August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) 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.
In a caree ...
,
Charles Warren Stoddard
Charles Warren Stoddard (August 7, 1843 April 23, 1909) was an American author and editor best known for his travel books about Polynesian life.
Biography
Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, New York on August 7, 1843. He was desce ...
(writing at first as "Pip Pepperpod"),
Fitz Hugh Ludlow
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as Fitzhugh Ludlow (September 11, 1836 – September 12, 1870), was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best known for his autobiographical book ''The Hasheesh Eater'' (1857).
Ludlow also wrote about hi ...
,
Adah Isaacs Menken
Adah Isaacs Menken (June 15, 1835August 10, 1868) was an American actress, painter and poet, and was the highest earning actress of her time.Palmer, Pamela Lynn"Adah Isaacs Menken" ''Handbook of Texas Online,'' published by the Texas State Histor ...
,
Ada Clare
Ada Clare ( pen names, Clare and Ada Clare; July 1834 – March 4, 1874) was an American actress and writer.Kenneth T. Jackson: ''The Encyclopedia of New York City'': The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press; 1995. P. 238.
Life a ...
,
Prentice Mulford
Prentice Mulford (April 5, 1834 – c. May 30, 1891) was an American literary humorist and California author. In addition, he was pivotal in the development of the thought within the New Thought movement. Many of the principles that would becom ...
,
Dan De Quille
William Wright (1829–1898), better known by the pen name Dan DeQuille or Dan De Quille, was an American author, journalist, and humorist. He was best known for his written accounts of the people, events, and silver mining operations on the Com ...
,
J. S. Hittell and some women such as
Frances Fuller Victor
Frances Auretta Fuller (Barritt) Victor ( pen names: Florence Fane, Dorothy D.) (May 23, 1826 – November 14, 1902) was an American historian and historical novelist. She has been described as "the first Oregon historian to gain regional and nat ...
. Stoddard recalled the newspaper as "the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains".
[Tarnoff, Ben. ''The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature''. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 40. ]
History
![Golden Era building - 732 Montgomery Street](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Golden_Era_building_-_732_Montgomery_Street.jpg)
''The Golden Era'' began in 1852 as a weekly founded by
Rollin M. Daggett and J. Macdonough Foard. 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. He had previously published his first poem in the ''Golden Era'' in 1857 and, in October of that same year, his first prose piece on "A Trip Up the Coast". 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".
In the 1860s, New Yorker
Charles Henry Webb
Charles Henry Webb (January 24, 1834 – May 24, 1905) was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings.
Biography
Webb was born at Rouse's Point, New York in 1834.
Webb worked as ...
became the highest paid contributor to the magazine. In his regular column at the end of 1863, he announced that he and Harte "determined to start a paper" of their own. The result was the ''
Californian'', begun in May 1864, with Webb as publisher and Harte as star contributor and occasional editor. For the rest of the decade, ''The Golden Era'' and ''The Californian'' were significant rivals.
Harr Wagner bought the weekly in 1882. In January 1886, Wagner changed to monthly publication, and hired
Joaquin Miller
Cincinnatus Heine Miller (; September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913), 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 h ...
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
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
—city officials enticed him with a $5,000 subsidy.
The office for ''The Golden Era'' was located initially in the
Golden Era Building
Golden Era Building, formerly known as the Call Building, is a historic commercial building built in 1852 during the California Gold Rush, and located at 732-734 Montgomery Street in the Jackson Square area of San Francisco, California.
The Gold ...
on 742 Montgomery Street from 1852 until 1854;
and later on Clay Street.
References
* Gleen E. Humpreys, The Golden Era, American Literary Magazines, 1986
External links
* Links to articles and quotes by Mark Twain published in
the Golden Era'.
* Short radio episode of Twain's ''
published in the ''Golden Era'' magazine in 1865 from
California Legacy Project
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Golden Era, The
Newspapers published in the San Francisco Bay Area
Defunct newspapers published in California
Publications established in 1852
1852 establishments in California