The Iliad of Sandy Bar: How a small quarrel can have long reaching consequences

As a young boy Harte developed an early love of books and reading. He first published at the tender age of 11, his satirical poem `Autumn Musings'. Expecting praise he received anything but and later wrote "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse."

By age 13 his formal education was at an end and four years later the family moved to California. Here the young man worked in a...