The California Legacy Project (CLP) began in 2000 as a project at Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University is a private, not-for-profit, Jesuit-affiliated university located in Santa Clara, California, United States. Chartered by the state of California and accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, it operates in collaboration with the Society of Jesus , whose...

 (SCU) in Santa Clara, CA and later partnered with Heyday Books

Heyday Books

Heyday Books is an independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley, California.Heyday was founded by Malcolm Margolin in 1974 when he wrote, typeset, designed, and distributed The East Bay Out, a guide to the natural history of the hills and bayshore around Berkeley and Oakland...

 in Berkeley, CA. The project uses a research team of SCU interns to create radio scripts for the radio anthology "Your California Legacy" on KAZU

KAZU

KAZU is an NPR-member radio station, licensed in Pacific Grove, California, United States. The station is currently owned and operated by the California State University, Monterey Bay.-Established:...

 90.3 FM, Pacific Grove. This anthology broadcasts nearly 500 literary segments ranging from Gold Rush narratives to Beat poetry. Project interns also develop reader guides to accompany books released by the California Legacy Series (CLS). These supplemental guides include timelines, discussion questions, and additional reading suggestions.

CLS, a component of CLP, focuses on the literature of California’s past, publishing reprints, new anthologies, and single-author readers. Notable authors in the series include Mary Austin, Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

, Toshio Mori

Toshio Mori

Toshio Mori is an American author, best known for being one of the earliest Japanese American writers to publish a book of fiction.-Biography:...

, John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

, and Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers"...

. In addition to publishing, CLP also organizes a variety of presentations, panel discussions, and public readings throughout the state, highlighting the culture, heritage, and history of California.

Mission

The general objective of The California Legacy Project is "to raise public awareness and appreciation for our state's cultural legacy and to encourage faculty and students in their creative and scholarly interest in Californian culture."

California Legacy Series

Jaime de Angulo

Jaime de Angulo

Jaime de Angulo was a linguist, novelist, and ethnomusicologist in the western United States. He was born in Paris of Spanish parents. He came to America in 1905 to become a cowboy, and eventually arrived in San Francisco on the eve of the great 1906 earthquake. He lived a picaresque life...

• Indian Tales; Introduction by Darryl Babe Wilson

Mary Austin

• Essential Mary Austin, Edited and with an Introduction by Kevin Hearle

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

• Essential Bierce, Edited and with an Introduction by John R. Dunlap

Sally Carrighar

Sally Carrighar

Sally Carrighar was an American naturalist and writer. She is especially known for her series of nature books chronicling the lives of wild animals. Humans are often absent from these tales....

• One Day on Beetle Rock; Foreword by David Rains Wallace; Illustrations by Carl Dennis Buell

Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe wrote under the pen name of 'Dame Shirley'.Louise Clappe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. As a child, Clappe attended the primary public education that was mandatory of all Massachusetts schools. Her family valued education because they believed it was the...

• The Shirley Letters: From the California Mines, 1851-1852; Introduction by Marlene Smith-Baranzini

William Leon Dawson

William Leon Dawson

William Leon Dawson was a noted American ornithologist, author and lecturer.-Early Years:William Dawson was born on 20 February, 1873 at Leon, a small county seat in southern Iowa just north of the Missouri State line. He was the only child of William E...

• Dawson's Avian Kingdom: Selected Writings by William Leon Dawson, Edited by Anna Neher

William Everson

William Everson

William Everson , also known as Brother Antoninus, was an American poet of the San Francisco Renaissance and was also a literary critic and small press printer.-Beginnings:Everson was born in Sacramento, California...

• Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader, Edited and with an Introduction by Albert Gelpi

Eliza Farnham

Eliza Farnham

Eliza Farnham was a 19th-century American novelist, feminist, abolitionist, and activist for prison reform. Her fame as a writer rests upon her work Life in Prairie Land , an account of life on the Illinois prairie near Pekin between 1836 and 1840. She strongly believed in the use of phrenology...

• Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California, Joann Levy; Foreword by Kevin Starr

Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Maria Hunt Jackson, born Helen Fiske , was a United States writer who became an activist on behalf of improved treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government. She detailed the adverse effects of government actions in her history A Century of Dishonor...

• A Separate Star: Selected Writings of Helen Hunt Jackson, Edited by Michelle Burnham

Georgiana Bruce Kirby

• Unsettling the West: Eliza Farnham and Georgiana Bruce Kirby in Frontier California, Joann Levy; Foreword by Kevin Starr

Harriet Lane Levy

Harriet Lane Levy

Harriet Lane Levy is a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a girlhood friend of Alice B. Toklas, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein. She was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family and raised in San Francisco...

• 920 O'Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco; Introduction by Charlene Akers

Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

• Tales of the Fish Patrol; Introduction by Jerry George

William Lewis Manly

• Death Valley in '49; Edited by LeRoy and Jean Johnson; Introduction by Patricia Nelson Limerick

Frank Marryat

Frank Marryat

Frank Marryat was a sailor, artist, and author.Frank was one of the sons of Frederick 'Captain' Marryat.He joined the Royal Navy at 14 years old as midshipman and made a number of drawings during his service on H.M.S.Samarang in the Far East in 1843: he planned to publish these without any...

• Mountains and Molehills, or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal; Foreword by Robert Chandler; Annotations by Scott R. Grau

Carey McWilliams

Carey McWilliams (journalist)

Carey McWilliams was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about social issues in California, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II...

• Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader, Introduction by Gray Brechin; Preface by Wilson Carey McWilliams

Toshio Mori

Toshio Mori

Toshio Mori is an American author, best known for being one of the earliest Japanese American writers to publish a book of fiction.-Biography:...

• Unfinished Message: Selected Works of Toshio Mori, Introduction by Lawson Fusao Inada

John Muir

John Muir

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...

• Essential Muir, Edited by Fred White

Walter Nordhoff

• The Journey of the Flame; Foreword by Rebecca Solnit

Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce

Josiah Royce was an American objective idealist philosopher.-Life:Royce, born in Grass Valley, California, grew up in pioneer California very soon after the California Gold Rush. He received the B.A...

• California: A Study of American Character; Introduction by Ronald A. Wells

William Saroyan

William Saroyan

William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

• Essential Saroyan, Edited by William E. Justice

Charles Melville Scammon

Charles Melville Scammon

Charles Melville Scammon was a 19th-century whaleman, naturalist, and author. He was the first to hunt the gray whales of both Laguna Ojo de Liebre and San Ignacio Lagoon, the former once being called "Scammon's Lagoon" after him. In 1874 he wrote the book The Marine Mammals of the North-western...

• Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America; Foreword by Dick Russell

Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

• The Land of Orange Groves and Jails: Upton Sinclair's California, Edited by Lauren Coodley

Lincoln Steffens

Lincoln Steffens

-Biography:Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California....

• The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens; Introduction by Thomas C. Leonard

Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers"...

• Wallace Stegner's West, Edited and with an Introduction by Page Stegner

George R. Stewart

George R. Stewart

George Rippey Stewart was an American toponymist, a novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley...

• Storm; Foreword by Ernest Callenbach

Bayard Taylor

Bayard Taylor

Bayard Taylor was an American poet, literary critic, translator, and travel author.-Life and work:...

• Eldorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire; Foreword by James D. Houston; Afterword by Roger Kahn

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

• Mark Twain's San Francisco, Edited and with a new Introduction by Bernard Taper; Illustrations by Edward Jump

Judy Van der Veer

• November Grass, Judy Van der Veer; Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin

Harry Leon Wilson

Harry Leon Wilson

Harry Leon Wilson was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels, Ruggles of Red Gap and Merton of the Movies. His novel, Bunker Bean helped popularize the term flapper.-Biography:...

• Merton of the Movies; Introduction by David Fine

Additional works:

• Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early California, 1535-1846, Edited by Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz
• Califauna: A Literary Field Guide, Edited by Terry Beers and Emily Elrod
• Gunfight at Mussel Slough: Evolution of a Western Myth, Edited by Terry Beers
• Unfolding Beauty, Edited by Terry Beers
• Spring Salmon, Hurry to Me: The Seasons of Native California, Edited by Margaret Dubin and Kim Hogeland
• California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present, Edited by Dana Gioia, Chryss Yost, and Jack Hicks
• The Anza Trail and the Settling of California, Vladimir Guerrero
• Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California, Edited by Rick Heide; Foreword by Juan Velasco
• Inlandia: A Literary Journey through California's Inland Empire, Edited by Gayle Wattawa; Introduction by Susan Straight