Richard Harding Davis 1864-1916, American author and journalist, b. Philadelphia; son of Rebecca Harding Davis . After attending Lehigh and Johns Hopkins universities, he became a reporter in Philadelphia and later was on the New York Evening Sun. His stories and articles were soon attracting attention, and with the publication of Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), a collection of tales about a newsboy-detective, his reputation as a fiction writer was established. In 1890 he became managing editor of Harper's Weekly and began making trips in its behalf to various parts of the world. As a foreign correspondent he covered all the wars of his day and published several books recording his experiences; his war dispatches were colorful and dramatic, frequently at the expense of accuracy. Besides collections of short stories, his other writings include the novels Soldiers of Fortune (1897) and The Bar Sinister (1903) and the plays The Dictator (1904) and Miss Civilization (1906).

Bibliography: See his Adventures and Letters (ed. by his brother, C. B. Davis, 1917); biography by A. Lubow (1992).

Davis, Richard Harding (1864–1916), son of Rebecca H. Davis, was born in Philadelphia, where in 1886 he began the journalistic career that was to make him the leading reporter of his time. His reporting and “specials” for the New York Sun (1889–90) and his short stories for Scribner's attracted wide attention. In 1890 he became managing editor of Harper's Weekly. The letters reporting his various journalistic tours of this period were collected in The West from a Car Window (1892), The Rulers of the Mediterranean (1894), Our English Cousins (1894), About Paris (1895), and Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America (1896). As correspondent for New York and London papers, he reported the Spanish war in Cuba, the Greco‐Turkish War, the Spanish‐American War, the Boer War, the Russo‐Japanese War, and World War I. From his observations came the following books: Cuba in War Time (1897), A Year from a Reporter's Note‐Book (1898), The Cuban and the Porto Rican Campaigns (1898), With Both Armies in South Africa (1900), Notes of a War Correspondent (1910), With the Allies (1914), and With the French in France and Salonika (1916). As a correspondent, Davis was a vivid and picturesque writer, always dramatizing the facts of his stories. After the publication of Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), he collected more than 80 other short stories in 11 volumes, all of which show adept craftsmanship but are journalistic, with more stress on effect and form than on substance. Van Bibber and Others (1892) contains anecdotes of New York life concerning Courtlandt Van Bibber, a rich young clubman who breaks laws with one hand while befriending the weak and poor with the other. The title story of The Exiles (1894) deals with moral contrasts in a colony of American outcasts at Tangier. The Lion and the Unicorn (1899), Ranson's Folly (1902), and The Scarlet Car (1907) are among the other collections of tales. His vivid but superficial novels include such treatments of the international scene as Soldiers of Fortune (1897), The King's Jackal (1898), Captain Macklin (1902), The Bar Sinister (1903), Vera the Medium (1908), The White Mice (1909). From Davis's facile pen also came 25 plays, of which the most popular were Ranson's Folly (1904), The Dictator (1904), and Miss Civilization (1906).

Richard Harding Davis

The American journalist Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) was also a fiction writer and dramatist whose swashbuckling adventures were popular with the American public.

Richard Harding Davis was born into a well-to-do and rather pious Episcopalian family in Philadelphia. His father, an editorial writer, and his mother, a well-known fiction writer, often entertained Philadelphia artists and visiting actors and actresses, and the boy from the start was completely at ease with celebrities. After graduating from Episcopal Academy and Lehigh University, he studied political economy during a postgraduate year at Johns Hopkins University. In 1886 Davis became a reporter for the Philadelphia Press. The editor and other reporters confidently expected the cocky young dandy to fall on his face, but he shortly proved to be a superb reporter and a talented writer. From 1888 to 1890 he was in New York writing special stories for the Sun. He also published two volumes of short stories, Gallegher and Other Stories (1891) and Van Bibber and Others (1892). At the age of 26 he became the managing editor of Harper's Weekly and soon was writing accounts of his worldwide travels, which were collected in books such as Rulers of the Mediterranean (1894), About Paris (1895), and Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America (1896).

As a picturesque and alert correspondent for New York and London newspapers, always appropriately attired for each adventure, Davis covered the Spanish War and the Spanish-American War in Cuba, the Greco-Turkish War, the Boer War, and—toward the end of his life (he died in 1916)—World War I. He based a number of books upon his experiences. More short stories filled 10 volumes, including The Lion and the Unicorn (1899), Ranson's Folly (1902), and The Scarlet Car (1907). A number of Davis's novels covered the international scene; notable were Soldiers of Fortune (1897), The King's Jackal (1898), Captain Macklin (1902), and The White Mice (1909). In addition, Davis wrote about two dozen plays, of which dramatizations of Ranson's Folly (1904), The Dictator (1904), and Miss Civilization (1906) were the most successful.

The critic Larzer Ziff in The American 1890's admirably summarized Davis's significance: "He demonstrated to those … who would listen that their capacity for excitement was matched by the doings in the wide world. But he also demonstrated to an uneasy plutocracy … that their gospel of wealth coming to the virtuous and their public dedication to genteel manners and gentlemanly Christian behavior were indeed justified."

Further Reading

For a complete list of Davis's writings consult Henry Cole Quinby, Richard Harding Davis: A Bibliography (1924). Two studies relate the author to his background admirably: Fairfax D. Downey, Richard Harding Davis: His Day (1933), and Gerald Langford, The Richard Harding Davis Years: A Biography of a Mother and Son (1961).

Additional Sources

Lubow, Arthur, The reporter who would be king: a biography of Richard Harding Davis, New York: Scribner; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992. □