In 1905, Alfred B. Nye, who was at the time private secretary to the governor of California, began collecting poems by California and other Pacific Coast writers, with the intention of publishing a volume of the selections and brief biographies of the authors. Accordingly, he wrote the authors, asking permission to publish certain poems and requesting biographical data. The response was generally very favorable, the authors granting the request and often suggesting the poems they regarded as their best. After the San Francisco earthquake and fire, Nye was compelled to abandon work on the project for many months. In November 1906 he was appointed state controller and found the work so time consuming that there was none to devote to his literary pursuits. To one of the sympathetic poets he wrote:

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Collection is open for research.