Author: Rebecca Harding Davis Publisher: University of Georgia Press ISBN: 0820334359 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
The ten stories gathered here show Rebecca Harding Davis to be an acute observer of the conflicts and ambiguities of a divided nation and position her as a major transitional writer between romanticism and realism. Instead of focusing on major Civil War conflicts and leaders, she takes readers into the intimate battles fought on family farms and backwoods roads.
Author: Rebecca Harding Davis Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 32
Book Description
A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in th
Author: Rebecca Harding Davis Publisher: Lulu.com ISBN: 1365147150 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 46
Book Description
Before Women Had Rights, They Worked - Regardless. Life in the Iron Mills is a short story (or novella) written by Rebecca Harding Davis in 1861, set in the factory world of the nineteenth century. It is one of the earliest American realist works, and is an important text for those who study labor and women's issues. It was immediately recognized as an innovative work, and introduced American readers to ""the bleak lives of industrial workers in the mills and factories of the nation."" Reviews: Life in the Iron Mills was initially published in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 0007, Issue 42 in April 1861. After being published anonymously, both Emily Dickinson and Nathaniel Hawthorne praised the work. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward was also greatly influenced by Davis's Life in the Iron Mills and in 1868 published in The Atlantic Monthly""The Tenth of January,"" based on the 1860 fire at the Pemberton Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Get Your Copy Now.
Author: Jean Pfaelzer Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press ISBN: 0822980673 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 536
Book Description
Rebecca Harding Davis was a prolific writer who published chiefly in popular periodicals over the latter half of the nineteenth century. In tales that combine realism with sentimentalism and in topical essays, Davis confronted a wide range of current issues—notably women’s problems—as one who knew the frustration caused by the genteel female’s helpless social position and barriers against women entering the working world. In an excellent critical introduction, Jean Pfaelzer integrates cultural, historical, and psychological approaches in penetrating readings of Davis’s work. She emphasizes how Davis’s fictional embrace of the commonplace was instrumental in the demise of American romanticism and in eroding the repressive cultural expectations for women. In both fiction and nonfiction, Davis attacked contemporary questions such as slavery, prostitution, divorce, the Spanish-American War, the colonization of Africa, the plight of the rural South, northern racism, environmental pollution, and degraded work conditions generated by the rise of heavy industry. Written from the standpoint of a critical observer in the midst of things, Davis’s work vividly recreates the social and ideological ferment of the post-Civil War United States. The American literary canon is enriched by this collection, nearly all of which is reprinted for the first time.
Author: Rebecca Harding Davis Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press ISBN: 9780826513847 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
This is the annotated edition of novelist/journalist Rebecca Harding Davisís 1904 autobiography, Bits of Gossip, and a previously unpublished family history written for her children. The memoirs are not traditional autobiography; rather, they are Davis's perspective on the extraordinary cultural changes that occurred during her lifetime and of the remarkable--and sometimes scandalous--people who shaped the events. She provides intimate portraits of the famous people she knew, including Emerson, Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ann Stephens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Horace Greeley. Equally important are Davis's commentaries on the political activists of the Civil War era, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, from the "daughters of the Southland" to Lucretia Mott, from Henry Ward Beecher to William Still.
Author: Jane Atteridge Rose Publisher: Twayne Publishers ISBN: Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
Despite this legacy, most scholars who have studied Davis's works in depth concur that she did not fulfill the promise shown in "Life in the Iron-Mills." To earn more money for her family, Davis eventually decided to favor quantity over quality. On the advice of her publisher she lightened her dark view of the human condition, and on the advice of her husband, a crusading journalist, she sometime advocated social causes in her fiction and was then criticized for being didactic. While she never abandoned her quest to write serious, honest fiction, her commitment was likely compromised under these influences.
Author: Various Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 9780140390766 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
Representing four prominent American women writers who flourished in the period following the Civil War, this collection includes "Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett, and "Souls Belated" by Edith Wharton. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author: Rebecca Harding Davis Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803256701 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
A scathing critique of the legal status of women and their property rights in nineteenth-century America, Rebecca Harding Davis’s 1878 novel A Law Unto Herself chronicles the experiences of Jane Swendon, a seemingly naïve and conventional nineteenth-century protagonist struggling to care for her elderly father with limited financial resources. In order to continue care, Jane seeks to secure her rightful inheritance despite the efforts of her cousin and later her husband, a greedy man who has tricked her father into securing her hand in marriage. Appealing to middle-class literary tastes of the age, A Law Unto Herself elucidated for a broad general audience the need for legal reforms regarding divorce, mental illness, inheritance, and reforms to the Married Women’s Property Laws. Through three fascinating female characters, the novel also invites readers to consider evolving gender roles during a time of cultural change.
Author: Gale, Cengage Learning Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning ISBN: 1410351130 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 32
Book Description
A Study Guide for Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.