Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910), born Rebecca Blaine Harding, was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861), and is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the transition from Romanticism to Realism in American literature. Throughout her lifetime, she sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about these marginalised groups' plight in the 19th century. From 1869 onwards, she was a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent. In 1889, however, she resigned from the Tribune in order to protest editorial censorship of her articles. Her other works include Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), Waiting for the Verdict (1868), Dallas Galbraith (1868), John Andross (1874), Kitty's Choice (1874), Silhouettes of American Life (1892), Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896), Frances Waldeaux (1897) and Bits of Gossip (1904).
You must read this book and let your heart be broken-New York Times Book Review "One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor."-Michele Murray, National Observer Suggested for course use in: 19th-century U.S. literature Working-class studies Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) published 12 books and many serialized novels, stories, and essays.
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910), born Rebecca Blaine Harding, was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861), and is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the transition from Romanticism to Realism in American literature. Throughout her lifetime, she sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about these marginalised groups' plight in the 19th century. From 1869 onwards, she was a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent. In 1889, however, she resigned from the Tribune in order to protest editorial censorship of her articles. Her other works include Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), Waiting for the Verdict (1868), Dallas Galbraith (1868), John Andross (1874), Kitty's Choice (1874), Silhouettes of American Life (1892), Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896), Frances Waldeaux (1897) and Bits of Gossip (1904).
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910), born Rebecca Blaine Harding, was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861), and is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the transition from Romanticism to Realism in American literature. Throughout her lifetime, she sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about these marginalised groups' plight in the 19th century. From 1869 onwards, she was a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent. In 1889, however, she resigned from the Tribune in order to protest editorial censorship of her articles. Her other works include Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), Waiting for the Verdict (1868), Dallas Galbraith (1868), John Andross (1874), Kitty's Choice (1874), Silhouettes of American Life (1892), Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896), Frances Waldeaux (1897) and Bits of Gossip (1904).
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910), born Rebecca Blaine Harding, was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the Atlantic Monthly (1861), and is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the transition from Romanticism to Realism in American literature. Throughout her lifetime, she sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about these marginalised groups' plight in the 19th century. From 1869 onwards, she was a regular contributing editor to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent. In 1889, however, she resigned from the Tribune in order to protest editorial censorship of her articles. Her other works include Margaret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), Waiting for the Verdict (1868), Dallas Galbraith (1868), John Andross (1874), Kitty's Choice (1874), Silhouettes of American Life (1892), Doctor Warrick's Daughters (1896), Frances Waldeaux (1897) and Bits of Gossip (1904).
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.
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.”
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Recovered for a new generation of feminist readers, this revolutionary depiction of the American working poor was one of the first literary critiques of industrial capitalism by a nineteenth-century proletarian. Originally published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, “Life in the Iron Mills” remains a classic of proletarian literature that paints a bleak and incisive portrait of nineteenth-century industrial America. Rebecca Harding Davis was one of the first writers to depict a working class that was exploited and exhausted as capitalism’s mills and factories destroyed both the natural environment and the human spirit. Davis's work was first recovered in the 1970s by the Feminist Press and writer Tillie Olsen, and then expanded in the 1980s to be the most comprehensive collection of her work to date. This reissued edition includes an updated critical introduction by labor journalist Kim Kelly, and shares a uniquely prescient capitalist critique with a new generation.
A milestone of American letters, David's first novel, Margret Howth (1862) anticipates by more than three decades the novels of naturalism and realism and introduced the working class heroine and the burgeoning industrial revolution into US fiction. Margaret, who is abandoned by her lover and works in the mills to support her parents, is kin to the passionate heroines of the Brontes, George Eliot, and Kate Chopin.
You must read this book and let your heart be broken-New York Times Book Review "One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor."-Michele Murray, National Observer Suggested for course use in: 19th-century U.S. literature Working-class studies Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) published 12 books and many serialized novels, stories, and essays.
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. 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.
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