The Heathen Chinee

First separate edition of Plain Language from Truthful James, which first appeared as an article in The Overland Monthly in September 1870.

Issued as a printed envelope-folder containing nine lithographed caricature plates by John Hull, each accompanied by a poem.

No copy recorded in the CCF.

Small angular tears to the envelope, with some staining to the lower margin.

Originally intended as a fierce satire on the racial prejudice of Irish-American workers against the numerous Chinese immigrants competing for railway construction jobs, the piece was widely misread as mocking the immigrants themselves.

The Jewish writer and poet Francis Brett (Bret) Harte (1836–1902) had long opposed all forms of racial discrimination and had already gained notoriety for his vehement denunciation of the Wiyot massacre at Tuluwa in February 1860.

It was this distortion of meaning that led the author later to call it the “worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote.”