Life in the Iron Mills: Or, The Korl Woman

Front Cover
Feminist Press, 1985 - Business & Economics - 174 pages
Life in the Iron Mills is a short story written by Rebecca Harding Davis in 1861, set in the factory world of the nineteenth century. It is one of the earliest American realist works, and is an important text for those who study labor and women's issues.

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1985)

Rebecca Harding Davis shocked readers with the grim realism of her stories, which appeared during a time when sentimental romances were popular. Her first published story, "Life in the Iron Mills," appeared anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861. The daughter of a prosperous businessman, Rebecca Harding grew up in Wheeling (then in Virginia) on the Ohio River. There she observed the industrial ironworkers' misery and struggle for existence and witnessed the harsh treatment of slaves, which she described in her first novel, Margaret Howth: A Story of Today (1862). She warned her son, writer and journalist Richard Harding Davis, against doing "hack work for money."

Bibliographic information