Rebecca Harding Davis

Valley High School honor roll

The following students were named to the Valley High School second semester honor roll with a 3.4 GPA or higher:

Roshan Abid, Kale Abrahamson, Kaya Abrahamson, Laney Abrahamson, Emily Ackerman, Amber Aeilts, Josh Aguirre, Alex Albaugh, Irma Alic, Forrest Allbee, Joseph Ambrose, Ben Anderson, Cory Anderson, Dylan Anderson, Tyler Anderson, Allison Apland, Samuel Arends, Erik Arneson, Madison Arnold, Brandon Arp, Blake Arrington, Jasmine Au, Jessica Au, Naing Aung, Pallavi Aurora, Abigail Austin.

Catherine Babikian, Breanna Bagby, Qingxin Bai, Bilal Baig, Fawad Baig, Leah Bailin, Nailah Bakari, Madeline Baker, Clark Baldus, Carmen Ballagan, Signe Bamsey, Virginia Bantz, Chelsey Barnett, Nicholas Barrett, Alexandra Bartlett, Shraddha Batra, Sara Bauer, Mason Bear, Alexandra Becker, Erica Becker, Nicole Becker, Aaron Bell, Brooke Belling, Jessie Benson, Michaela Berg, Jenna Berger, Samantha Bernholtz, Michael Berntson, Malynda Berry, Abby Beuse, Hannah Beuse, Emily Bierbaum, Katherine Bloomburg, Connor Blythe, Jeffrey Bodin, Kylie Boeve, Ethan Bolander, Sarah Bolander, Nathan Bond, Katrina Bopp, Christian Boshart, Willard Boyd, Brooke Brady, Trevor Bridge, Connor Bright, Maria Brodskiy, Tyler Brommel, Collin Brouwer, Katlyn Brouwer, Abby Brown, Callie Brown, Gabriel Brown, Haley Brown, Hannah Brown, Jay Brown, Keegan Brown, Spencer Brown, Dorothy Bruggemann, Conner Buchanan, Jamie Bullington, Alec Bunting, Madilyn Burgess, Hannah Burton, Kolby Burton, Breanne Butters.

Christina Cacciatore, Bryan Campos, Jacob Campos, Jasmine Carber, Benjamin Carlson, Hannah Carlson, Kayla Carpenter, Julia Carson, Genevieve Catellier, Anna Cesario, Rebecca Chamberlin, Pedro Chavez, Eric Chen, Yirui Chen, Laura Christ, Bradley Christensen, Sarah Christian, Pete Christiansen, Katelyn Cinnamon, Doug Clarke, Abigail Clay, Ashlyn Clingman, Carly Colosimo, Bailey Conklin, Austin Cook, Margaret Cooper, Alex Coppess, Natasha Coult, Mckinzie Cowley, Riley Coy, Emily Crawford, Abigail Crew, Joshua Crew, William Crichton, Nicole Criner, Casandra Crose, Rodriguez, Cruz, Katherine Cunningham, Sara Cunningham, Sarah Curran, Grant Curry, Eric Cushing.

David Daft, Christin Dahms, Taylor Dalbey, Kalyn Davenport, Stephen Davick, Ryan Davisson, Alexander Dawe, Alexander Day, Paige Deay, Michelle DeBo, Dylan DeClerck, Quinn Degen, Jacob DeHaai, Madison Denkinger, Megan DeSart, Nina DeVilbiss, Nicolle Devoto, Katherine Diaz, Alexandra DiBlasi, Mary Dickey, Madison Dierks, Meredith Dierks, Nicholas Dimenstein, Linh Do, Philip Dobrinov, Shruti Doctor, Michael Doheny, Tyler Dolan, Noah Doll, Holly Domeier, Evan Domek, Kayla Donahe, Andrew Dorn, Caitlin Dorsett, Nikki Dunbar, Kyle Duncan, Jackson Dunn, Kelsey Dunn, Rachel Dunn, David Duvall, Alexander Dvorak.

A Groundbreaking Realist: Rebecca Harding Davis

(1861), A tale of workers' struggles. This story employs a realistic style over two decades before the height of American literary realism.

Born June 24, 1831, to Rachel Leet Wilson and Richard W. Harding, Rebecca Blaine Harding graduated class valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania and worked for a time as a reporter for the (1862), appeared soon after. From Massachusetts, she traveled to Philadelphia to visit journalist Lemuel Clarke Davis, an admirer with whom she had been corresponding. The two were engaged and married on March 5, 1863. Although Davis briefly battled debilitating depression in the early years of her marriage, she went on to become a regular contributor to the , in 1904—the same year her husband died. In her preface, Davis explains that she will not be presenting a traditional memoir, but rather a cultural memoir that focuses on the people and events that shaped her life. She believed that every person should write "not the story of his own life, but of the time in which he lived, —; as he saw it, —; its creed, its purpose, its queer habits, and the work which it did or left undone in the world. Taken singly, these accounts might be weak and trivial, but together, they would make history live and breathe" ( p. iii ).

In the earliest chapters, Davis nostalgically describes average Americans in their everyday lives, but she also dedicates a significant portion of her narrative to famous authors and politicians, particularly when she details her 1862 journey to Massachusetts. She describes walking with Oliver Wendell Holmes to look at old gravestones; dining with Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom she labels a prophet and his blind follower, respectively; and being entertained at the home of the "necromancer" Nathaniel Hawthorne, an experience she remembers as one of the best in her life ( p. 59 ). She later discusses famous abolitionists and the horrors, as well as the unforeseen benefits of, the Civil War.

Rebecca Harding Davis, writing cultural autobiography

Rebecca Harding Davis

Life in the Iron-mills, Easyread Large Edition

Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism

Rebecca Harding Davis, pioneer realist