Writer, born in Washington, Pennsylvania, USA. The mother of Richard Harding Davis, she was largely self-educated, and first attracted attention with Life in the Iron-Mills, published in Atlantic Monthly (1861), and with her realistic Civil War stories. Her novels portraying the bleak lives of factory workers, including Margaret Howth (1862), and African-Americans, such as Waiting for the Verdict (1868), gained her the reputation as a pioneer of American naturalism. After 1863 she lived in Philadelphia, the setting of much of her later work.
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910;
Life and Work
Rebecca Blaine Harding was born to Richard and Rachel Leet Wilson Harding in Washington, Pennsylvania on June 24, 1831.
When she was 14, she was sent back to Washington, Pennsylvania, to attend the Washington Female Seminary, from where she graduated as class valedictorian in 1848.
Life in the Iron Mills, published in the Atlantic Monthly in April 1861, is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the transition from Romanticism to Realism in American literature.
On her journey back from a meeting with her publisher, James Fields, Rebecca met L.
From 1869 onwards, Rebecca Harding Davis was a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent.
On September 29, 1910, Rebecca Harding Davis died of a stroke at her son Richard's house in Mt.
Works
Books
Margret Howth (1861) Waiting for the Verdict (1867) Kitty's Choice or Berrytown and Other Stories (1873) John Andross (1874) A Law unto Herself (1878) Natasqua (1886) Kent Hampden (1892) Silhouettes of American Life (1892) Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896) Frances Waldeaux (1897) Bits of Gossip (1904)Short Fiction
"Life in the Iron Mills" Atlantic Monthly (1861) "David Gaunt" (1862) "John Lamar" (1862) "Paul Blecker" (1863) "Ellen" (1865) "The Harmonists" (1866) "In the Market" (1868) "A Pearl of Great Price" (1868) "Put out of the Way" (1870) "General William Wirt Colby" Wood's Household Magazine (1873) [] "Earthen Pitchers" (1873-1874) "Marcia" (1876) "A Day with Doctor Sarah" (1878) "Here and There in the South" (1887)Essays
"Men's Rights" (1869) "Some Testimony in the Case" (1885) "Women in Literature" (1891) "In the Gray Cabins of New England" (1895) "The Disease of Money-Getting" (1902)
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