GOLD RUSH : A Literary Exploration

The news of gold in California beckoned people from every continent on earth. This astonishing and instant migration would leave its mark forever on California and, indeed, the entire world. Taking a comprehensive look at the excitement, unrest, exploitation, and romanticism of the California gold rush, this unique and authoritative anthology combines firsthand accounts by the participants themselves and retrospective writings by later authors with dozens of historical photographs, cartoons, and other illustrations.

Long sea voyages, arduous overland trips, life in early, bohemian San Francisco, and the feudalism of late gold rush society - all are vividly described in the words of those who experienced them. The writings of well-known authors like Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Dame Shirley, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London blend with less familiar voices - Native Californians, Jews, immigrants from Asia, South America, and Europe, and women. Modern authors such as Bill Barich, Czeslaw Milosz, and Gary Snyder offer contemporary perspectives on the gold rush's environmental, economic, and cultural legacies. Together, these rich writings evoke the spirit and emotions of this legendary era.

Michael Kowalewski is an associate professor of English and American Studies at Carleton College in Minnesota. A native Californian who grew up in Redding, he has been teaching and writing about California for the past decade, both at Carleton and at Princeton University. His essays and reviews have appeared in more than a dozen periodicals. He is the author, among other works, of _Deadly Musings: Violence and Verbal Form in American Fiction_ (1993) and the editor of _Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West_ (1996).