by Rebecca Harding Davis

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).