Rebecca Harding Davis - Personal Life and Family

Personal Life and Family

Upon returning to her industrial hometown, Wheeling, Rebecca Harding Davis socialized very little, staying largely within her own family circle. She continued this isolated way of life for thirteen years until the publication of Life in the Iron Mills in 1861.

Life in the Iron Mills, published in the Atlantic Monthly in April 1861, is regarded by many critics as a pioneering document marking the beginning of realism in American literature. The successful publication of the short story also won her acclaim in the literary circles of her time. At the time it was published, Harding was acknowledged as a "brave new voice" by Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They were impressed with the author's goal, which was "to dig into the commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it". She later met and became acquainted with Emerson whilst staying with Nathaniel Hawthorne during a trip she had long delayed to meet her publisher James Thomas Fields. She greatly admired both of these American writers. During this trip around the North, which originated with her publisher's desire to meet her personally, Davis also became close friends with her publisher's wife, Annie Adams Fields.

On her journey back from a meeting with her publisher, Rebecca met L. Clarke Davis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, whom she had been corresponding with since he had contacted her as an admirer of her work after the publication of Life in the Iron Mills. They became engaged one week after meeting and were married on March 5, 1863. Clarke was four years younger than Davis and not yet financially or professionally established in the world. The following year she gave birth to their first son, Richard Harding Davis, who was to become a writer and journalist himself. Their second son, Charles Belmont, was born in 1866; their daughter, Nora, in 1872.

At the start of their marriage Davis was the primary income provider for their family, as Clarke worked to establish himself in his law career. She accomplished this through her writing and as an editor for the New York Tribune. However, ten years after their marriage Davis had faded substantially from the literary world. Clarke gave up law and became an editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer as well. As Clarke's success grew, Davis' work became more closely linked to that of a mother and a housewife. In 1892, Davis received a small critical and popular success with Silouettes of American Life but it was her last. She died at age 79, on September 29, 1910.