Editing Joaquin Miller (section)

===Travels===
[[File:Photograph of Joaquin Miller.jpg|thumb|Joaquin Miller, 1903]]
Miller had sent a copy of ''Joaquin, et al.'' to [[Bret Harte]], who offered advice that he avoid "faults of excess" and encouragingly wrote, "you are on your way to become a poet."<ref>Nissen, Axel. ''Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper''. University of Mississippi Press, 2000: 93–94. {{ISBN|978-1-57806-253-9}}</ref> The next summer, July 1870, Miller traveled to [[San Francisco]] with borrowed money and there befriended [[Charles Warren Stoddard]] and Ina Coolbrith. Stoddard was the first to meet him at the dock and, as he recalled, Miller's first words to him were, "Well, let us go and talk with the poets."<ref>Marberry, 64</ref>

Miller went to England, where he was celebrated as a frontier oddity. There, in May 1871, Miller published ''Songs of the Sierras'', the book which finalized his nickname as the "Poet of the Sierras".<ref>Marberry, 93–94</ref> It was well received by the British press and members of the [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]], particularly [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]] and [[William Michael Rossetti]].

While in England, he was one of the few Americans invited into the [[Savage Club]] along with [[Julian Hawthorne]], son of [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]. The younger Hawthorne referred to Miller as "a licensed libertine" but admitted to finding him "charming, amiable, and harmless".<ref>Marberry, 85–86</ref> Rather abruptly, Miller left England in September 1871 and landed in New York. At the encouragement of family, he made his way to [[Easton, Pennsylvania]] to visit his dying brother before returning to Oregon; his father died shortly thereafter. Miller eventually settled in California, where he grew fruit and published his poems and other works.

In 1877, Miller adapted his ''First Fam'lies of the Sierras'' into a play, ''The Danites, or, the Heart of the Sierras''. It opened on August 22 in New York with [[McKee Rankin]] as the main character.<ref>Marberry, 158–159</ref> The anti-[[Mormons|Mormon]] play, which featured [[Danite]]s hunting the daughter of one of the murderers of [[Joseph Smith]], became one of the most commercially successful in a series of anti-Mormon dramas at the time. The ''[[Spirit of the Times]]'', however, attributed its success to curious audience members expecting a disastrous failure and instead discovering a good show: "The play proved to possess more than ordinary merit, and if it is not a great work, it is decidedly not a very bad one."<ref>Jones, Megan Sanborn. ''Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama''. Taylor & Francis, 2009: 103. {{ISBN|978-0-415-80059-4}}</ref> ''The Danites'' was extended from a run of only a few days to one of seven straight weeks before moving to another theatre and, ultimately, was performed to such a degree that it rivaled the popularity of ''[[Tom Shows|Uncle Tom's Cabin]]''.<ref>Marberry, 159–160</ref> It was published in book form later in 1877.<ref name=Peterson179>Peterson, 179</ref> Miller later admitted that he regretted the anti-Mormon tone.<ref>Marberry, 160</ref>

Miller married for a third time on September 8, 1879 to Abigail Leland, in [[New York City]].