Richard Harding Davis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Richard Harding Davis**

Born:	April 18, 1864 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Died:	April 11, 1916 New York City, New York, USA
Occupation:	writer, war correspondent, journalist
Nationality:	American
Writing period:	19th and early 20th Century
Genres:	history, romantic novels, short stories
Subjects:	Africa, War, Cuba, Europe
Influences:	H. Rider Haggard
Influenced:	Sinclair Lewis

For other persons named Richard Davis, see Richard Davis (disambiguation).

Richard Harding Davis (18 April 1864—11 April 1916) was a popular writer of fiction and drama, and a journalist famous for his coverage of the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and the First World War. Davis, a managing editor of Harper's Weekly, was one of the world's leading war correspondents at the time of the Second Boer War in South Africa. As an American, he had the unique opportunity to see the war first-hand from both the English and Boer perspectives. Davis also worked as a reporter for the New York Herald, The Times, and Scribner's Magazine.

He was popular among the leading writers of his time, and was considered the model for illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's dashing Gibson man, the male equivalent of his famous Gibson Girl. He is also referenced early in Sinclair Lewis's book, Dodsworth as the example of an exciting, adventure-seekign legitimate hero.

In 1898, at the time of the Spanish-American War, Davis was on a U.S. Navy ship when he witnessed the shelling of Matanzas, Cuba, during the Santiago campaign. Davis' story made headlines, but as a result, the Navy prohibited reporters from being aboard any U.S. ship for the rest of the war.

Davis was a good friend of Teddy Roosevelt and he helped create the legend surrounding the Rough Riders. Some have even gone so far to accuse Davis of involvement in the William Randolph Hearst's alleged plot to start the Spanish-American War in order to boost newspaper sales, however, Davis refused to work for Hearst after a dispute over fictionalizing one of this articles.

Despite his alleged association with Yellow journalism, his writings of life and travel in Central America, the Caribbean, Rhodesia, South Africa during the Second Boer War, and his coverage of the Salonika Front of the First World War have remained a vivid portrait of the time.

A plaque denoting his boyhood home can be seen at 21st and Chancellor Streets in Philadelphia. He later attended Lehigh University and Johns Hopkins.