Bretnor, Helen Harding

Jean-Nicolas Perlot was born in Belgium in 1823. He emigrated to California during the gold rush, worked as a gold miner in California, 1851-1857, and later settled in Oregon, where he worked as a landscape gardener. Perlot returned to Belgium in 1872 and spent the remainder of his life there. His autobiography, Vie et aventures d'un enfant de l'Ardenne, was published in Belgium in 1897. Helen Harding Bretnor worked as a public services librarian at the Bancroft Library, 1943-1967. Her English translation of Perlot's autobiography was edited by Howard R. Lamar and published as Gold Seeker: Adventures of a Belgian Argonaut During the Gold Rush Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).