Richard Harding Davis

Richard Harding Davis

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 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.

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.

Some have accused Davis of involvement in the William Randolph Hearst's alleged plot to start the Spanish-American War in order to boost newspaper sales.

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

Partial list of works

• The West From A Car Window (1892)
• Exiles, and other stories (1894)
• Three Gringos in Venezuela (1896)
• Soldiers of Fortune (1897)
• Cuba in War Time (1897)
• Dr. Jameson's radiers vs. the Johannesburg reformers (1897)
• The Cuban & Porto Rican campaigns (1899)
• Cinderella, and other stories (1899)
• Gallegher, and other stories (1899)
• The Lion and the Unicorn (1899)
• With Both Armies (1902) - Davis on the Second Boer War
• Ranson's folly (1902)
• The bar sinister (1903)
• Real Soldiers of Fortune (1906) - an early biography of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., (1861-1947), Chief of Scouts, et.al.
• The Congo and coasts of Africa (1907)
• Notes of a War Correspondent (1910)
• Peace manoeuvres; a play in one act (1914)
• With the French in France and Salonika (1916)