A Study Guide for Rebecca Harding Davis's "Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

A Study Guide for Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

A Study Guide for Rebecca Harding Davis's "Life in the Iron Mills," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

American culture has long had a conflicted relationship with assistance to the poor. Cotton Mather and John Winthrop were staunch proponents of Christian charity as fundamental to colonial American society, while transcendentalists harbored deep skepticism towards benevolence in favor of Emersonian self-reliance and Thoreau's insistence on an ascetic life. Women in the 19th century, as these essays show, approached issues of benevolence far differently than their male counterparts, consistently promoting assistance to the impoverished, in both their acts and their writings.

A milestone of American letters, David's first novel, Margret Howth (1862) anticipates by more than three decades the novels of naturalism and realism and introduced the working class heroine and the burgeoning industrial revolution into US fiction. Margaret, who is abandoned by her lover and works in the mills to support her parents, is kin to the passionate heroines of the Brontes, George Eliot, and Kate Chopin.

Life in the Iron Hell “In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and moulding figures,—hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion.” - Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills Life in the Iron Mills is one of the first American novels that depicts the precarious state of the impoverished working class. ‘Molly Wolfe’ is a member of this class working 12 hours a day, six days a week to earn a living. Because of his condition, he cannot develop his innate artistic talent. His cousin, Deborah tries to help him but the consequences are devastating. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes