History in the Margins

Rebecca Harding Davis, ca 1865

One of the joys of writing this blog is that when things are going well one post leads to another idea, another story, another question. It feels like my list of possible topics bubbles and fizzes* and I can hardly decide which story to tell you next.** This is one of the times when the ideas are flowing.

Which brings me to Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) , with a hat tip to Helena Luna who (very politely) pointed out on Bluesky that I had barely scratched the surface of Davis’s story when I mentioned her in my post on her son ,Richard Harding Davis.  I scuttled off to find out more.

Rebecca Harding grew up in Wheeling, Virginia,*** which was then a booming factory town, with an economy based on iron and steel mills. Originally home-schooled by her parents, she went away to boarding school at fourteen. After graduating at the top of her class, she returned home to Wheeling, where she joined the staff of the local newspaper.

Back home, she began to write stories and publish them anonymously. (Not an unusual choice for women writers at the time.) She became famous in literary circles with the publication of her novella, Life in the Iron Mills, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in April 1861.**** The novella impressed contemporary readers with its detailed and dark depictions of the conditions under which mine workers and their families existed. A few months later, The Atlantic Monthly began publishing Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day, her novel about a young woman working in the mills to support her family, as a serial. (It was later published in book form.) At much the same time, she also began publishing in Peterson’s Magazine, a women’s magazine that was less prestigious than The Atlantic, but paid its authors more. (Don’t get me started.)

In June, 1862, Rebecca traveled to Boston to meet the editor of The Atlantic Monthly. While there she met several prominent New England authors, both those who had praised her work as a brave new voice and those whose work she had long admired. (I picture mutual fan-girl squealing when she met Louisa May Alcott.) From there she went on to Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. In Philadelphia she met journalist Lemuel Clarke Davis, who had sent her a fan letter praising Life in the Iron-Mills. They had corresponded during the months that followed. A week after they met In Real Life, they became engaged. (Do not underestimate the power of correspondence as courtship.) They married a year later and settled in Philadelphia.

For several years, while Lemuel established himself in his career, Rebecca was the primary breadwinner of the family. In addition to writing for Peterson’s Magazine, she contributed stories and articles for national magazines like Harper’s New Monthly, Putnam’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner’s Monthly, as well as children’s magazines like Youth Companion. She published six more novels and an autobiography, which were well received at the time but largely forgotten today, except in the academic circles that study forgotten women writers. In 1869, she became a regular contributor to and editor of the New York Tribune, where she remained for almost twenty years.

She published more than 500 works over the course of her lifetime. ( A number that makes me tired just thinking about it.) But she was almost forgotten at the time of her death in 1910. She was rediscovered in 1972 when feminist author Tillie Olsen republished Life in the Iron Mills in the Feminist Press.

Today Rebecca Harding Davis is considered a pioneer of literary realism in American literature.

*Or maybe I’m the one bubbling and fizzing. It’s always exciting when the work flows. Sometimes I actually have to stand up and walk away from the computer because I get so excited that I can’t keep up. (Yes, I am a nerd. Your point?)

**As opposed to the days when I look at the list of ideas for blog posts and wonder why I thought any of them were worth writing about. I’ve learned to walk away from that feeling as well, because while some of the ideas in fact turn out to be duds, the real problem in that moment is me.  (Apparently the answer is always to get up and walk away.)

***Now West Virginia—a fact which led me down a little rabbit hole. Short version: Many people in the area that is now West Virginia had wanted to secede from Virginia since 1829 for what boils down to insufficient representation in the state legislature , over-taxation, and not enough state funds coming back into the region. When Virginia voted to secede from the United States in 1861, western leaders chose not to follow the state’s lead and remained loyal to the Union. In other words, they seceded from the secession.

****The same month the American Civil War began, and shortly before West Virginia became West Virginia.