Francis Brett Hart was born in Albany, New York on August 25, 1836. When he was young, his father changed their last name to Harte. Francis preferred to use his middle name but dropped the second T, going by Bret. At age 11, Harte published his first work, a poem now lost, to the ridicule of his family. His formal education ended soon after when he was 13.

After moving to California in 1853, Harte tried his hand at different jobs, including an unsuccessful attempt at prospecting for gold. He was also a writer, poet, reporter, and editor, and his work was praised by Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Rudyard Kipling, and mystery writer Ellery Queen. He lived in a northern California coastal town until he received death threats provoked by his editorial, which criticized an 1860 massacre of Indigenous Americans. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he wrote a widely-published poem critical of anti-Chinese hate. Titled “Plain Language from Truthful James,” it became better known by a different name, “The Heathen Chinee.” Intended to be satirical, it was taken literally by the very people he satirized, to Harte’s dismay.

“The Luck of Roaring Camp” was first published in 1868 in The Overland Monthly literary magazine.