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George Sterling ( 1869- 1926), was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, and moved to California in 1890. A poet who became a significant figure in Bohemian literary circles in northern California, and in the development of the artists' colony in Carmel, he was close friends with Ambrose Bierce, Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith among other California writers and poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Bierce published Sterling's first poems in his "Prattle" column in William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, and arranged for the publication of A Wine of Wizardry[1] in the September 1907 number of Cosmopolitan, which afforded Sterling some national notice. Despite such famous mentors as Bierce and Ina CoolbrithIna Coolbrith (born Josephine Donna Smith) ( March 10, 1841- 1928) was a poet and writer, and a prominent and beloved figure in the San Francisco literary community. She was a friend of Samuel Clemens, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Joaquin Mill, and his long association with London, Sterling himself never became well known outside California.