Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) was one of the United States’ premier writers from the 1860s until her death in 1910.  While Davis is accurately recognized as a pioneering realist, she also engaged in an impressive range of other literary styles—including romanticism, folklore, and the gothic—to convey her analyses of American culture.  After gaining national stature with her first major publication, “Life in the Iron-Mills” (Atlantic Monthly, April 1861), Davis went on to publish ten novels and a collection of short stories in book form, an additional sixteen serialized novels, hundreds of short stories and essays for adults, more than a hundred short stories for juveniles, and a memoir.  Davis’s writings addressed major political and social events of the nineteenth century—the relationship of capitalists and laborers, the Civil War, Reconstruction, changing social roles for women, US imperialism, and especially the lives of “everyday men and women.”

Biodata by Sharon M. Harris, University of Connecticut, Storrs, for the Rebecca Harding Davis Society. Accessed 26 July 2013.