Rebecca Harding Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831–1910) was an American realist author and journalist whose work helped bring industrial poverty into U.S. literature. Born in Washington, Pennsylvania, and raised in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), she drew on the region’s iron mills for her breakthrough novella, *Life in the Iron Mills* (1861), first published in *The Atlantic Monthly*. Davis went on to write fiction, essays, and reportage for major periodicals, often focusing on labor, women’s lives, and social reform. She married L. Clarke Davis and later lived in Philadelphia. Her later books include *Margaret Howth* (1862) and the memoir *Bits of Gossip* (1904).