David Graham Phillips

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David Graham Phillips (1908)

David Graham Phillips (born October 31, 1867 in Madison , Indiana , † January 24, 1911 in New York City ) was an American writer and journalist . He drew attention to himself through socially critical novels or stories, but above all as a pioneer of the journalistic Muckrakers , who primarily campaigned against corruption among politicians from both major US parties. He also paid tribute to this role through his untimely death: he was victim of an attack at the age of 43.

life and work

After graduating from Princeton University (1887), the son of a well-to-do politician first worked for various daily newspapers in Cincinnati and New York before he worked as a freelance writer with the success of his first novel The Great God Success from 1901 behind him. For example, Phillips published important revelatory articles in Cosmopolitan magazine . The “cheeky muckraker”, who had a “noble bourgeois lifestyle”, brought down a number of senators bribed by industrial groups in this way. He was assassinated in January 1911 by an orchestral musician who was mistaken that his (prominent) family was pelted with dirt in Phillip's novel The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig . The assassin shot himself.

For William Higgins, the narrator Phillips made a name for himself as an advocate of the emancipation of women, for example in The Plum Tree, A Women Ventures, Old Wives for New, The Price she Paid, The Worth of a Woman, The Hungry Heart and in his extensive novel Susan Lenox , published posthumously in 1917. The novel revolves around a prostitute who, after many humiliations, manages to break free from her bonds. Neither Theodore Dreiser nor Upton Sinclair could beat the ruthlessness with which Phillips portrayed slum life and the horror of white slavery. On the other hand, on the fundamental social issues, Phillips did not go beyond countering corruption with “vague populism” and a return to honesty. The solution to these questions didn't really interest him.

If you follow his biographer Louis Filler , Phillips was one of the leading novelists of his time, while he has now largely been forgotten. The Irish-British newspaperman, dandy and writer Frank Harris , who had met Phillips in New York City, even went so far as to proclaim the prolific writer (1927) the greatest American novelist. Phillips had delivered a number of unsurpassable masterpieces, first and foremost White Magic , only his last work, Susan Lenox , had failed him completely. "The man who shot him shot a corpse."

Works

Narrative prose

  • The Great God Success , 1901
  • Her Serene Highness , 1902
  • A Woman Ventures , 1902
  • Golden Fleece: The American Adventures of an Fortune-Hunting Earl , 1903
  • The Master-Rogue: The Confessions of a Croesus , 1903
  • The Cost , 1904
  • The Social Secretary , 1905
  • The Deluge , 1905
  • The Mother-Light , 1905
  • The Plum Tree , 1905
  • The Fortune Hunter , 1906
  • The Second Generation , 1907
  • Light Fingered Gentry , 1907
  • Old Wives for New , 1908
  • The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig , 1909
  • The Hungry Heart , 1909
  • White Magic , 1910
  • The Husband's Story , 1911
  • The Conflict , 1911
  • The Grain of Dust , 1911
  • George Helm , 1912
  • The Price she Paid , 1912
  • Degarmo's Wife and other Stories , 1913
  • Susan Lenox, fro Fall and Rise , 1917

play

  • The Worth of Women , 1908 (premiered the same year)

Essays and other things

  • The Reign of Gilt , 1905
  • The Treason of the Senate , 1953

literature

  • Frank Harris: David Graham Phillips: the Greatest American Novellist , in: Latest contemporary portraits , 1927
  • Isaac Frederick Marosson: David Graham Phillips and His Times , New York 1932
  • Abe C. Ravitz: David Graham Phillips , New York 1966
  • James R. Bailey: David Graham Phillips: Novellist of the Progressive Eva , University of Indiana 1971
  • Louis Filler: Voice of the Democracy. A critical biography of David Graham Phillips , London 1978, reprinted by Pennsylvania State University Press 1990
  • Robert Miraldi: The journalism of David Graham Phillips , in: Journalism Quarterly , Vol. 63, No. 1, 1986, pp. 83-88
  • Anthony R. Fellow: Media history , Second Edition, Boston / Massachusetts 2005

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b psu press , accessed April 2012
  2. ↑ The topic is also covered in this Wikipedia article.
  3. ↑ a b Frank Harris 1927
  4. ↑ This assessment shares the Larousse dictionary of writers from 1994
  5. ^ For Kindler's Neues Literaturlexikon , Munich 1988 edition, it is Phillips' most important work. In 1931 he was with Clark Gable and Greta Garbo filmed
  6. ^ William Higgins in: James Vinson (ed.): Novelists and prose writers , London 1979
personal data
SURNAME Phillips, David Graham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Madison , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1911
Place of death New York City