Life In The Iron Mills And Other Stories by Rebecca Harding Davis

Life In The Iron Mills And Other Stories by Rebecca Harding Davis

Recovered for a new generation of feminist readers, this revolutionary depiction of the American working poor was one of the first literary critiques of industrial capitalism by a nineteenth-century proletarian.

Originally published in 1861 in the Atlantic Monthly, Life in the Iron Mills remains a classic of proletarian literature that paints a bleak and incisive portrait of nineteenth-century industrial America. Rebecca Harding Davis was one of the first writers to depict a working class that was exploited and exhausted as capitalism's mills and factories destroyed both the natural environment and the human spirit.

Davis's work was first recovered in the 1970s by the Feminist Press and writer Tillie Olsen, and then expanded in the 1980s to be the most comprehensive collection of her work to date. This reissued edition includes an updated critical introduction by labor journalist Kim Kelly, and shares a uniquely prescient capitalist critique with a new generation.

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) was an American author, journalist, and a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. Her seminal work Life in the Iron Mills originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1861, gaining her immediate acclaim. Lauded as a brave new voice by both Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Walph Emerson, Davis held a prolific career with over 500 published works, including Waiting for the Verdict, John Andross, and Silhouettes of American Life, and worked as an editor for the New York Tribune. Though she fell out of public knowledge by her death, Davis was reintroduced to the literary circles in the 1970s by feminist writer Tillie Olsen, re-emphasizing her heavy significance to American literature.

Tillie Olsen (1912-2007) was an American writer, activist, editor, and part of the first generation of American feminists. Her most notable works include Tell Me a Riddle, Yonondio: From the Thirties, and Silences. She was awarded nine honorary degrees, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.