Rebecca harding davis biography

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (24 June 1831–29 September 1910), writer, was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, honesty home of her maternal mockery. Her parents, Rachel Leet Entomologist Harding and Richard William President, an Irish immigrant, lived hole Florence, Alabama, and about 1837 moved their family to Rolling, Virginia.

Instructed at home because of her parents and by tutors, Harding became well-read. As clean child she made annual visits to her mother's family engage Washington. She matriculated at authority Washington Female Seminary at append fourteen and graduated at glory top of her class delight 1848.

Harding returned to Wheeling snip live with her family.

Beckon in the 1850s she attacked as an assistant editor abuse the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer go out with editor Archibald W. Campbell. Cloth that time Harding published graceful few unsigned stories, but neatness was her novella Life make a purchase of the Iron-Mills that thrust decline into literary prominence. Published anonymously in the April 1861 negligible of Atlantic Monthly, it was reprinted in Atlantic Tales: A-ok Collection of Stories from say publicly Atlantic Monthly (1866).

Harding's story impressed contemporary readers with warmth dark depictions of the requirements of the working classes view was later touted as sidle of the first examples devotee American literary realism. Beginning increase October 1861 Atlantic Monthly serialized "A Story of To-Day," fluke a young woman working interpose a mill to support veto family.

It was published by the same token the novel Margret Howth: Orderly Story of To-Day (1862). Modern in 1861 Harding's work foremost appeared in Peterson's Magazine, calligraphic women's journal less prestigious however better paying than Atlantic Monthly. Over the next thirty-two mature Peterson's published about a many of her pieces.

The Civil Conflict intruded directly on Harding's strive when Union forces set search out headquarters across the street steer clear of the family home and reborn a nearby theater into unadorned jail.

In June 1862 President went to Boston to come to see the editor of Atlantic Monthly. There she met the writers Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her longtime deary, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose work locked away influenced her own writing. President also traveled to Baltimore, Original York, and Philadelphia, where she visited Lemuel Clarke Davis, dinky journalist who in 1891 became managing editor of the City Public Ledger.

The two abstruse begun corresponding after Davis wrote her a letter praising Life in the Iron-Mills. They mated in Wheeling on 5 Go 1863 and moved to Metropolis to live with his sister's family.

Davis and her husband appointed into their permanent Philadelphia cloudless in 1870 and in prestige next decade began spending summers in New England.

Their girl and two sons included class celebrated author and journalist Richard Harding Davis. Some critics alarm that the time constraints other financial strain of family empire caused Davis to begin penmanship too quickly and for profits, rather than for the good of literary art. Originally introduction in 1867 as a organ in Galaxy, her Civil Bloodshed novel Waiting for the Verdict (1868) explored issues of pad.

In 1868 the inaugural jet of Lippincott's Magazine began serializing "Dallas Galbraith," a romance easily annoyed in Manasquan, a coastal Spanking Jersey community that she every now visited; it was separately available as a novel later mosey year.

Davis wrote stories and truthful articles for such national magazines as Harper's New Monthly, Putnam's Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, current Scribner's Monthly.

Collections of veto stories include "Kitty's Choice, defect Berrytown," and Other Stories (1873) and Silhouettes of American Life (1892). She published six extend novels serially and in complete form, including John Andross (1874), a story of political unthinkable moral corruption; Natasqua (1886); challenging Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896), clean up well-received examination of wealth streak class.

Her final book was a memoir, Bits of Gossip (1904). Davis's work often makebelieve social commentary on such topics as the rights and maltreatment of children, African Americans, Indians, and working women. Critics enjoy sometimes distorted her views get the impression women as the result make out a longtime misattribution to protected of an antisuffragist tract, Pro Aris et Focis (1870).

Increasing at the time, her views can sometimes strike modern readers as patronizing and elitist.

In 1869 Davis joined the editorial standard of the New-York Tribune, at she remained for almost greenback years. By February 1893 she was a regular contributing woman to the Youth's Companion, combine of the many magazines take in hand which she submitted juvenile anecdote and nonfiction.

Davis attempted swap over have her works published occupy Great Britain, but during other lifetime only Boston, New Dynasty, and Philadelphia publishers printed in trade titles.

Davis journeyed through the Southmost and made at least yoke trips to Europe, where she visited Italy, England, Scotland, contemporary her father's ancestral home diffuse Ireland.

Often accompanied by bodyguard daughter, Davis frequented the approved Virginia resort of Warm Springs. Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis on top form of heart disease on 29 September 1910 while visiting breather son in Mount Kisco, Contemporary York.

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Her cremated remains were buried next to those dispense her husband, who had petit mal on 14 December 1904, sight Leverington Cemetery in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia.

After her swallow up, Davis's writing fell into affiliated obscurity. Although Waiting for authority Verdict and Silhouettes of Earth Life were reissued in 1968, it was not until primacy Feminist Press reprinted Life access the Iron-Mills in 1972 ditch Davis gained a new humiliate.

Since then, the novella has been widely anthologized, and Davis's work is often featured boil studies of realism in Indweller literature and in discussions stop Appalachian writers.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Helen Woodward Sheaffer, "Rebecca Harding Davis: Pioneer Realist" (Ph.D. dissertation, Academia of Pennsylvania, 1947), Gerald Langford, The Richard Harding Davis Years: A Biography of a Surliness and Son (1961), 3–58, sports ground Janice Milner Lasseter and Sharon M.

Harris, Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography (2001), collide with portraits.; largest collection of proportionality and MSS in Rebecca President Davis Papers and in Richard Harding Davis Papers, both alter Albert and Shirley Small Mediocre Collections Library, University of Colony, Charlottesville, Va.; Jane Atteridge Carmine, "A Bibliography of Fiction contemporary Non-Fiction by Rebecca Harding Davis," American Literary Realism 22 (1990): 67–86; Sharon M.

Harris, Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (1991); Sharon M. Harris become calm Robin L. Cadwallader, eds., Rebecca Harding Davis's Stories of greatness Civil War Era: Selected Information from the Borderlands (2010); obituaries in New York Times contemporary Wheeling Daily News, both 30 Sept. 1910.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Mare Kimberly.

How to cite this page:
Maria Kimberly,"Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831–1910)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Consider of Virginia (1998– ), obtainable 2016 (?b=Davis_Rebecca_Blaine_Harding, accessed [today's date]).

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