Stories of Today: Rebecca Harding Davis’ Investigative Fiction

UNCP Author/Contributor (non-UNCP co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Dr. Mark Canada, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP )
Web Site: http://www.uncp.edu/academics/library

Abstract: Long before her son, Richard Harding Davis, became a star reporter, Rebecca Harding Davis worked for the Wheeling Intelligencer in her home state of Virginia. Throughout a writing career that spanned ive decades and produced hundreds of stories, novels, and articles, she retained an interest in journalism. Beginning with an 1861 story, "Life in the Iron-Mills," she used fiction to report on current events. Later works, such as Put Out of the Way, an exposé of the system for institutionalizing the supposedly insane, and John Andross, a study of the effects of the Whiskey Ring on an individual, constituted a distinctive literary form: investigative fiction. Her work in this genre anticipated the major achievements of several other American writers, including Stephen Crane, Upton Sinclair, Truman Capote, and Tom Wolfe.

Additional Information

Publication
Journalism History; Summer 2012, v.38, Issue 2
Language: English
Date: 2012
Keywords
Journalism, Women Journalists, American Authors, American Women Authors, American Literature, Essayists
Subjects
Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910

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