The taciturn but kind gambler Jack Hamlin is a mainstay in the stories of Bret Harte, and Hamlin makes a number of appearances in this collection of tales, including the title story, "A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's," in which the gambler eludes the affections of several ardent admirers and saves a young girl who has been lured from her family home by an unscrupulous Casanova.

Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. Harte moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," appearing in The Overland Monthly magazine, propelled Harte to nationwide fame. "A Protge of Jack Hamlin's: Jeff Briggs's Love Story" is one of several stories Harte wrote featuring Jack Hamlin, a riverboat gambler. In this one, Jack finds himself involved in the romantic problems of a woman involved with fellow gambler Ned Stratton, despite the fact that "a certain modest doubt of his own competency to make an original selection had always made him prefer to confine his gallantries to the wives of men of greater judgment than himself." Other tales in this collection include "An Ingenue of the Sierras," "The Reformation of James Reddy," "The Heir of the Mchulishes," "An Episode of West Woodlands," and "The Home-Coming of Jim Wilkes."

Francis Bret Harte was born on August 25, 1836 in Albany New York. As a young boy Harte developed an early love of books and reading. He first published at the tender age of 11; a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings." Expecting praise he encountered anything but and was later to write "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, in 1853, the family moved to California. Here the young man worked in a variety of capacities; miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist. But it was also here on the West coast that he found the stories and inspiration for the works that would endure his fame across the literary world. He championed the early writings of Mark Twain. He was instrumental in propelling the short story genre forward and brought tales of the Old West and the Gold Rush to a greater audience. At the height of his fame we would entertain staggering monetary offers to write for monthly magazines. His talents extended to poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches. As he moved location initially further east to New York and then through Consular appointments to Europe and finally to settle in England his audience diminished but he continued to experiment, to write and to publish. Bret Harte died of throat cancer on May 5th 1902 and is buried in St Peter's Church in Frimley, Surrey, England. Here we publish another very fine collection of his short stories; "A Protegee of Jack Hamlin & Other Stories."