Rebecca Harding Davis
Rebecca Harding Davis (1831 - 1910 ) was an American author and journalist. Her most well-known works include Life in the Iron Mills, which is thought to be one of the first examples of literary realism, Waiting for the Verdict, and John Andross.
- Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis: BritannicaRebecca Blaine Harding Davis, née Rebecca Blaine Harding, (born June 24, 1831, Washington, Pa., U.S.—died Sept. 29, 1910, Mount Kisco, N.Y.), American essayist and writer, remembered primarily for her story “Life in the Iron Mills,” which is considered a transitional work of American realism...
- Wheeling Hall of Fame: Rebecca Harding Davis: Ohio Public LibraryIn 1861, when her story, "Life in the Iron Mills," was published anonymously in The Atlantic Monthly, few people in Wheeling could have imagined that this novella about human tragedy had been written by their 30-year-old spinster neighbor, Rebecca Harding...
Research & Reference
- Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis: Library of VirginiaRebecca Blaine Harding Davis (24 June 1831–29 September 1910), writer, was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, the home of her maternal aunt. Her parents, Rachel Leet Wilson Harding and Richard William Harding, an Irish immigrant, lived in Florence, Alabama, and about 1837 moved their family to Wheeling, Virginia. Instructed at home by her parents and by tutors, Harding became well-read. As a child she made annual visits to her mother's family in Washington. She matriculated at the Washington Female Seminary at age fourteen and graduated at the top of her class in 1848...
- Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910): Credo ReferenceNovelist and short story writer Rebecca Harding Davis is best remembered for her story “Life in the Iron Mills,” which was based on her experiences growing up in Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), published in 1861. It would earn her the reputation as one of the earliest American realists in one of the first works to explore industrialization in American literature...
- Rebecca Harding Davis, American Realist: JSTORHow do we record the voices of those who are silenced? We might do well to remember one of the first American realist writers. Rebecca Harding Davis is not much read these days, but in 1861 the Atlantic Monthly published her novella “Life in the Iron Mills” to great acclaim, jumpstarting an interesting career...
Streaming Media
- History Alive: Rebecca Harding DavisFeatures presenters who portray historical characters, with an emphasis on West Virginia history. Sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council.
- Rebecca Harding Davis Society - "Possibility, Toxicity, and Metaphysics in “Life in the Iron-Mills”Rebecca Harding Davis Society presents a lecture on Possibility, Toxicity, and Metaphysics in Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills”
Author's Works & Perspectives
Rebecca Harding Davis's Stories of the Civil War Era
The ten stories gathered here show Rebecca Harding Davis to be an acute observer of the conflicts and ambiguities of a divided nation and position her as a major transitional writer between romanticism and realism. Capturing the fluctuating cultural environment of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the stories explore such issues as racial prejudice and slavery, the loneliness and powerlessness of women, and the effects of postwar market capitalism on the working classes. Davis's characters include soldiers and civilians, men and women, young and old, blacks and whites. Instead of focusing (like many writers of the period) on major conflicts and leaders, Davis takes readers into the intimate battles fought on family farms and backwoods roads, delving into the minds of those who experienced the destruction on both sides of the conflict. Davis spent the war years in the Pennsylvania and Virginia borderlands, a region she called a "vast armed camp." Here, divided families, ravaged communities, and shifting loyalties were the norm. As the editors say, "Davis does not limit herself to writing about slavery, abolition, or reconstruction. Instead, she shows us that through the fighting, the rebuilding, and the politics, life goes on. Even during a war, people must live: they work, eat, sleep, and love."
A Law unto Herself
A scathing critique of the legal status of women and their property rights in nineteenth-century America, Rebecca Harding Davis's 1878 novel A Law Unto Herself chronicles the experiences of Jane Swendon, a seemingly naïve and conventional nineteenth-century protagonist struggling to care for her elderly father with limited financial resources. In order to continue care, Jane seeks to secure her rightful inheritance despite the efforts of her cousin and later her husband, a greedy man who has tricked her father into securing her hand in marriage. nbsp; Appealing to middle-class literary tastes of the age, A Law Unto Herself elucidated for a broad general audience the need for legal reforms regarding divorce, mental illness, inheritance, and reforms to the Married Women's Property Laws. Through three fascinating female characters, the novel also invites readers to consider evolving gender roles during a time of cultural change.
Rebecca Harding Davis
This is the annotated edition of novelist/journalist Rebecca Harding Davisís 1904 autobiography, Bits of Gossip, and a previously unpublished family history written for her children. The memoirs are not traditional autobiography; rather, they are Davis's perspective on the extraordinary cultural changes that occurred during her lifetime and of the remarkable--and sometimes scandalous--people who shaped the events. She provides intimate portraits of the famous people she knew, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ann Stephens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Greeley. Equally important are Davis's commentaries on the political activists of the Civil War era, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, from the "daughters of the Southland" to Lucretia Mott, from Henry Ward Beecher to William Still.