The Golden Era

The Golden Era was a 19th-century San Francisco newspaper. The publication featured the writing of f.e.g. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard (writing at first as "Pip Pepperpod"), Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Adah Isaacs Menken, Ada Clare, Prentice Mulford, Dan De Quille,[1] J.S. Hittell and some women such as Frances Fuller Victor.[2] Stoddard recalled the newspaper as "the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains".[3]

This article is about a 19th Century San Francisco newspaper. For other uses, see Golden Era.
The Golden Era, October 1865

History
The Golden Era Building (1852) is a landmark in San Francisco's Jackson Square Historic District

The Golden Era began in 1852 as a weekly founded by Rollin Daggett and J. Macdonough Foard.[4] 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.[5] He had previously published his first poem in the Golden Era in 1857[6] and, in October of that same year, his first prose piece on "A Trip Up the Coast".[7] 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".[8]

In the 1860s, New Yorker Charles Henry Webb became the highest paid contributor to the magazine.[9] In his regular column at the end of 1863, he announced that he and Harte "determined to start a paper" of their own.[10] The result was the Californian, begun in May 1864, with Webb as publisher and Harte as star contributor and occasional editor.[11] For the rest of the decade, The Golden Era and The Californian were significant rivals.[12]

Harr Wagner bought the weekly in 1882. In January 1886, Wagner changed to monthly publication, and hired Joaquin Miller 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—city officials enticed him with a $5,000 subsidy.[13]

The office for The Golden Era was located on Clay Street.[3]

References
  • Gleen E. Humpreys, The Golden Era, American Literary Magazines, 1986
  1. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain
  2. Companion to California
  3. Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 40. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  4. Twainquotes.com. "Mark Twain in The Golden Era, 1863–1866". Retrieved on July 26, 2009.
  5. Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 26–27. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  6. Scarnhorst, Gary. Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000: 6; ISBN 0-8061-3254-X
  7. Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 48–49. ISBN 1-57806-253-5
  8. Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 28. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  9. Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 76. ISBN 1-57806-253-5
  10. Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 65. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  11. Nissen, Axel. Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2000: 25. ISBN 1-57806-253-5
  12. Caron, James E. Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008: 217. ISBN 978-0-8262-1802-5
  13. Bennion, Sherilyn Cox. Equal to the occasion: women editors of the nineteenth-century West, University of Nevada Press, 1990, p. 127. ISBN 0-87417-163-6
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