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William Stearns Davis

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William Stearns Davis (1877–1930), American educator, historian, and author.

Life[1]

Davis was born 30 April 1877 in the presidential mansion of Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, where his mother's father had been president for the twenty-two years preceding his birth. His father was Congregational minister Wilson Vail Wilson Davis; his mother Francis Stearns. Due both to childhood illnesses and to family moves occasioned by his father's call to new congregations, Davis was largely educated at home until he entered Worcester Academy in 1895. In 1897 he matriculated at Harvard. Fascinated by maps and by historical figures, he had begun writing stories for himself while still at home. He now turned this experience and his desire to humanize history to writing historical novels, the first of which, A Friend of Caesar, was published in the year he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He continued at Harvard, being the first first-year graduate student to receive the Harvard Thayer Graduate Scholarship,[2] and earning his A.M. in 1901 and his Ph.D in 1905.[3] During these same years he continued publishing historical fiction.

In 1904, Davis began his formal teaching career, beginning as a lecturer at Radcliffe College while finishing his doctorate. He continued thereafter at Beloit College (instructor, 1906-07), Oberlin College (Assistant Professor of Medieval and Modern European History, 1907-1909), and finally at the University of Minnesota (Professor of History, 1909-1927). His steady output of non-fiction in both history and the historical background to contemporary world affairs began with his time at Minnesota. Professionally, he was a member of the American Historical Association.[4]

In 1911, he married Alice Williams Redfield of Minneapolis.[5] He retired from teaching in 1927, moving back to New England and taking up residence in Exeter, New Hampshire, with the intention of devoting all of his time to writing. However, he died of pneumonia following an operation at the age of 52 on 15 February 1930.

Writings

While "Davis contributed to history as a scholarly discipline, he was intrigued by the human side of history, which, at the time, was neglected by the discipline."[6] He began experimenting with short stories, but turned to longer novel forms to relate, from an involved (fictional) character's view, a number of critical turns of history. These include (among others) the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis, the coming to power of Julius Caesar, the early defense of Constantinople by Leo the Isaurian, the life of Saint Louis, the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. These novels are often meticulously footnoted with references to original language terms or nomenclature, citations for unfamiliar customs, and authors or translators of quoted contemporary texts. They reflect that form of historical fiction which Josephine Tey called "history-with-conversation".[7] A 1912 review of Davis' The Friar of Wittenberg says that the novelist "takes advantage offered by the dramatic moments of [Luther's] career. The great scene before the Diet of Worms is admirably described."[8]

Twentieth Century Authors reported that his "timely Roots of the War (1918) . . . rapidly became one of the most widely read of the first origins-of-the-war speculations . . . ." [9]

Books Published[10]

Non-fiction:

  • Outline History of the Roman Empire (44 B.C. to 378 A.D.) (1909)
  • The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome (1910)
  • Readings in Ancient History. Two volumes. Vol. I: Greece and the East (1912). Vol. II: Rome and the West (1913)
  • A Day in Old Athens: A Picture of Athenian Life (1914)
  • A History of Mediaeval and Modern Europe for Secondary Schools (with Norman Shaw McKendrick (1914)
  • The Roots of the War: A Non-technical History of Europe, 1870-1914, A.D. (with William Anderson and Mason W. Tyler) (1918), published in the United Kingdom as Armed Peace (1919)
  • A History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Versailles (1919)
  • A Short History of the Near East, from the Founding of Constantinople (330, A.D. to 1922) (1922)
  • Life on a Mediaeval Barony: A Picture of a Typical Feudal Community in the Thirteenth Century (1923)
  • A Day in Old Rome: A Picture of Roman Life (1925)
  • Europe Since Waterloo (1926), later revised by Walter Phelps Hall and republished as The Course of Europe since Waterloo (1941)
  • The French Revolution as Told in Fiction (1927)
  • Life in Elizabethan Days: A Picture of a Typical English Community at the End of the Sixteenth Century (posthumous, 1930)

Fiction

Notes

  1. ^ Kunitz; Krosch
  2. ^ Who's Who, iii, 369
  3. ^ Who's Who, iii, 369; xv (1903), 616
  4. ^ AHR,690
  5. ^ Who's Who, xv (1928-29), 616
  6. ^ Krosch, 240
  7. ^ Tey, 52
  8. ^ Nation, 237
  9. ^ Kunitz, 356
  10. ^ Lawrence, iv, 275; v, 254; updated

Sources

  • Adams, Oscar Faye. A Dictionary of American Authors. 5th ed., rev. & enlarged. Boston: Houghton Mifflen, 1904. Rpt. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1969.
  • The American Historical Review (abbreviated as AHR). "Historical News: Personal". Pub. American Historical Association. Vol. 35, No. 3 (Apr., 1930). Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1838466. Accessed: 09/09/2008 10:36.
  • Krosch, Penelope. "Davis, William Stearns." American National Biography, vol. vi. General editors: John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 (set ISBN 0-19-520635-5).
  • Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft. "Davis, William Stearns." Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942.
  • Lawrence, Alberta, ed. Who's Who Among North American Authors. Vol IV (1929-30), Vol. V (1931-32). Los Angeles: Golden Syndicate Publishing Co.
  • The Nation. "Current Fiction". Vol 95:2463 (12 September 1912).

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