An extraordinary portrait of a fast-changing Americaand the Western writers who gave voice to its emerging identity

At once an intimate portrait of an unforgettable group of writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America, The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the far western frontier changed our culture forever. Beginning with Mark Twains arrival in San Francisco in 1863, this group biography introduces readers to the other young eccentric writers seeking to create a new American voice at the countrys edgeliterary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protector of the group. Ben Tarnoffs elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering writers helped spread the Bohemian movement throughout the world, transforming American literature along the way.

Tarnoffs book sings with the humor and expansiveness of his subjects prose, capturing the intoxicating atmosphere of possibility that defined, for a time, Americas frontier. –The New Yorker

Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne…. Mr. Tarnoffs ultimate thesis is a strong one, strongly expressed: that together these writers helped pry American literature away from its provincial origins in New England and push it into a broader current.–Wall Street Journal