The unforgettable story of the birth of modern America and
the western writers who gave voice to its emerging
identity
The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco. The
Gold Rush has ended; the Civil War threatens to tear apart
the country. Far from the front lines, the city at the
western edge roars. A global seaport, home to immigrants
from five continents, San Francisco has become a complex
urban society virtually overnight. The bards of the moment
are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft
and seeking adventure; literary golden boy Bret Harte;
struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful,
haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group.
Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how
these four pioneering western writers would together create
a new American literature, unfettered by the heavy European
influence that dominated the East.
Twain arrives by stagecoach in San Francisco in 1863 and is
fast drunk on champagne, oysters, and the city’s
intoxicating energy. He finds that the war has only made
California richer: the economy booms, newspapers and
magazines thrive, and the dream of transcontinental train
travel promises to soon become a reality. Twain and the
Bohemians find inspiration in their surroundings: the dark
ironies of frontier humor, the extravagant tales told
around the campfires, and the youthful irreverence of the
new world being formed in the west. The star of the moment
is Bret Harte, a rising figure on the national scene and
mentor to both Stoddard and Coolbrith. Young and ambitious,
Twain and Harte form the Bohemian core. But as Harte’s star
ascendsdrawing attention from eastern taste makers such as
the Atlantic MonthlyTwain flounders, questioning
whether he should be a writer at all.
The Bohemian moment would continue in Boston, New York, and
London, and would achieve immortality in the writings of
Mark Twain. San Francisco gave him his education as a
writer and helped inspire the astonishing innovations that
radically reimagined American literature. At once an
intimate portrait of an eclectic, unforgettable group of
writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America,
The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the
western frontier changed our country forever.