Life in the Iron Mills: And Other Stories

by Rebecca Harding Davis, Tillie Olsen (Editor), Kim Kelly (Foreword by)

Overview

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. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936932887
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	08/18/2020
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) was an American author and 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 Waldo 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.

Kim Kelly is the labor columnist for Teen Vogue and a columnist on labor and class at the New Republic. Her writing on labor, politics, and culture have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Baffler, and many others. She is a proud member of and councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East, and has been active in multiple organizing and contract campaigns since 2015. She is currently based in Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. A Note from the Publisher

2. New Introduction

3. Life in the Iron Mills

4. A Biographical Interpretation by Tillie Olsen

5. The Wife's Story

6. Anne

What People are Saying About This

Tillie Olsen

"You are about to get the life of your reading to a forgotten American classic, Rebecca Harding's 'Life In The Iron Mills', reprinted here after one hundred tweny-four years from the April 1861 Atlantic Monthly'. Without precedent or predecessor, it recorded what no one else recorded; alone in his epoch and for decads to come saw the significance, the presage, in scorned or unseen native materials - and wrought them into art. For an in secret and in isolation by a 30-year old unmarried woman who lived far from literary circles of any kind, it won instant fame. To sleep in ever deeping neglect in our time."

Interviews

Table of Contents

1. A Note from the Publisher

2. New Introduction

3. Life in the Iron Mills

4. A Biographical Interpretation by Tillie Olsen

5. The Wife's Story

6. Anne

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Life in the Iron Mills

“You must read this book and let your heart be broken.” —New York Times Book Review

“One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor.” —National Observer

“An American classic that foreshadowed the naturalist technique of later nineteenth-century writers.” —San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

2020-06-17
This volume, consisting of three examples of short fiction by almost-forgotten 19th-century author Davis along with Olsen's biographical essay about her, first appeared in 1972 at the height of second-wave feminism.

Born in 1831, Davis spent most of her first 30 years as an obedient member of her wealthy Wheeling, West Virginia, family, though she was deeply affected by her “acquaintance with” radical reformer Francis LeMoyne while at finishing school in Washington, Pennsylvania. Then, in 1861, she published the title novella, about Hugh Wolfe, a lowly ironworker who possesses natural artistic talent, and his hunchbacked cousin, Deb, who silently loves him and inadvertently causes his ruin after misunderstanding some thoughtless words from wealthy visitors to the mill. Harding (not yet Mrs. Davis) became a literary darling for her realistic portrayal of the proletariat. Olsen makes clear that while Davis continued publishing fiction after she married until her death at 79, her embrace of her position in society as subservient wife and devoted mother battled against her literary ambitions. The two other stories here concern women facing that struggle. “The Wife’s Story,” written during Davis’ first pregnancy, concerns a woman deciding whether or not to leave her marriage to pursue her musical talent; Davis concocts an unsatisfactory double ending of tragedy and happy complacency that exposes her own ambivalence. In a later story, “Anne,” an older woman, outwardly successful in business and at home, briefly leaves her family to seek the creative dreams of her youth; the sense of the vibrant girl she once was becomes all the more moving when she returns home with her illusions about artists and intellectuals shattered. Davis was no Louisa May Alcott, but Olsen argues that her writing about women’s needs for both love and self-fulfillment was groundbreaking. The stories themselves are less noteworthy than Olsen’s biography of a writer grappling with issues she’d still face today.

A thought-provoking volume for anyone interested in the evolution of women’s fiction.

Kirkus Reviews