DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California" by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Thirteen tales of old California and the romantic life of the Spanish caballeros under Mexican rule. For other editions, see Author Catalog.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (October 30, 1857 - June 14, 1948) was an American writer. Atherton was an American Feminist and writer of social and historical fiction, much of it set in California. Although her reputation is founded primarily on her California fiction and essays, as well as her biography of Alexander Hamilton, Atherton also produced a number of Gothic stories, some of them, such as The Bell in the Fog, were considered significant achievements in the Gothic and supernaturalist traditions.These are stories of Old California, perhaps the best known collection of stories of that romantic period of California history when the incoming Americans were first intermingling with the Californians of rancho and presidio. Atherton's stories of love and death, bull and bear fights, moonlight meriendas, horse races and fancy dress balls, are increasingly meaningful and precious. They are truly classics of Californiana.

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Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (October 30, 1857 - June 14, 1948) was an American author. Many of her novels are set in her home state of California. Her bestseller Black Oxen (1923) was made into a silent movie of the same name. In addition to novels, she wrote short stories, essays, and articles for magazines and newspapers on such issues as feminism, politics, and war. Atherton's first publication was "The Randolphs of Redwood: A Romance", serialized in The Argonaut in March 1882 under the pseudonym Asmodeus. When she revealed to her family that she was the author, it caused her to be ostracized. In 1888, she left for New York, leaving Muriel with her grandmother. She traveled to London, and eventually returned to California. Atherton's first novel, What Dreams May Come, was published in 1888 under the pseudonym Frank Lin.