Charles Warren Stoddard was one of 19th and early 20th century California's best-known writers, and part of the Golden Gate Trinity with Bret Harte and Ina Coolbrith. One could say that together the Trinity contained all the things characteristic of San Francisco - equality of sexes, openly accepted homosexuality, Wild West sentimentality, and a millefiori-like mix of backgrounds.
Stoddard had gone to school with Charles de Young and became a special traveling correspondent for the latter's Chronicle, roving across Europe, the Middle East, and as far as Egypt. Travel writing was very popular genre at the time, and Stoddard was one of its most popular authors.

During his lifetime he was best known for his writings about Polynesia, but today those are less read and he remains in literature as the author of the first American novel about openly gay people (The Pleasure of His Company, 1903). It was essentially an autobiography. Stoddard's homosexuality was quite open and often got in the way Catholicism to which he converted in mid-life.