Educated by her parents until she was 14 and then at Washington Female Seminary where she graduated valdictorian with honours in 1848, Davis had been an avid reader since early childhood. Over the next decade she helped her mother run the family home in Wheeling, West Virginia and wrote for the Wheeling Intelligencer newspaper. Her first publication, the novella Life in the Iron-Mills, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861. Receiving rave reviews and acclaim for the stark realism of her work, Davis began to move in literary circles. In 1862, her first novel, Margret Howth appeared and, again, generated huge interest. She married L. Clarke Davis in 1863 and the following year gave birth to a son, Richard Harding Davis, who himself would go on to become a famous author. She contributed to the New York Tribune and the New York Independent from 1869 onwards, although she split with the Independent in 1889 over an editorial dispute. Davis has been hailed as the pioneer of literary realism in American literature and many of her works deal with the social issues of the times. Her other works include Waiting for the Verdict (1867), Dallas Galbraith (1868), John Andross (1874), A Law Unto Herself (1878), Silhouettes of American Life (1892), Doctor Warrick's Daughter (1896), Frances Waldeaux (1897) and her autobiography, Bits of Gossip (1904). |
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