I recently acquired a slender volume printed in Odessa in 1904 titled In California. It’s a Yiddish translation of Bret Harte’s Romantical Descriptions of life in California During the Gold Rush.
Bret Harte (1836-1902) was a popular American short story writer who published many well-received descriptions of life in the far West during the California Gold Rush. His short stories featured miners, gamblers, and other figures of the gold rush and helped romanticize life on the frontier to potential immigrants in the east and in the Old World.
This rare Yiddish edition was translated anonymously, and since a romantic view of the New World was common in prospective Jewish immigrants, it would have found an eager market in the Russian Empire during this period of mass Jewish immigration.
By end of the 1870s, following the Gold Rush, many Jews immigrated to California, particularly to the larger cities, especially San Francisco. It is estimated that over 18,000 Jews lived in California at this time, when the entire state’s population was approximately 750,000 people. In San Francisco, Jews represented seven to eight percent of the city’s population.
