Some academics have suggested that Rebecca Harding Davis’ “Life in the Iron Mills” should be regarded as the first work of American fiction which can rightly be categorized as an example of Realism. Not that it is entirely so; the caveat placed upon this notable honor is that it still demonstrates a very clear and present degree of the sentimentalism against which early proponents of realistic fiction like William Dean Howells railed. The criticism is minor, however, in consideration of two essential facts: the novella (or long short story) was published in the exact same that the Civil War official started and, perhaps even importantly, it was written by a woman at a time when "women's literature" was still almost synonymous with sentimentalism.
Rebecca Harding Davis had moved with her family as a child to Wheeling, Virginia and it was there that she spent an early life making the observations of mill workers which would form the basis for her most famous piece of literature. (Two years after publication, Wheeling would become the first capital of the new state of West Virginia following the decision of Union loyalists to secede from the Confederacy.)
Published in the Atlantic Monthly in April, 1861, “Life in the Iron Mills” was an immediately sensation and made the young Rebecca Harding an overnight sensation who would soon be calling some of the most well-known names in American literature admirers and friends. In addition to meeting Nathanael Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott still a few years away from writing Little Women, the suddenly famous Harding would also soon be introduced to a young newspaper man named Davis whom she would she marry in less than a year.
Although Davis's influence continued to be felt through her lifetime as both a writer and editor of New York Daily Tribune, the reputation of Davis still continues to rest almost entirely on her first published story. That reputation had already disappeared by the turn of the 20th century as Realism finally won out in its long battle with sentimental fiction for the hearts of the American reading public and other names and stories eclipsed her. Then another editor working for the Tribune who had also established her reputation with a bleakly realistic short story about working class oppression decided to republish “Life in the Iron Mills.” Tillie Olsen—famous for “I Stand Here Ironing”—tapped into an element of the story that had perhaps finally found its perfect moment in history when the Feminist Press published Davis in 1972 and the shifting of the focus onto the character of Deborah helped transform the author into an icon of the women’s movement.
