Richard Harding Davis is principally remembered as a popular romancer of the 1890s and early 1900s. The bulk of his writing was designed to please and titillate the popular readership, and, until his death in 1916, Davis regularly and rapidly wrote exactly what his large following wanted. True love, wrongs righted, vibrantly attractive heroines, manly heroes, and despicable villains were the familiar features of his short stories, novels, dramatic farces, and musical comedies. When he died he was receiving the highest fees paid for short fiction by American magazines. By 1916 he no longer resembled the bright, clever, and promising young artist who rose to national prominence in the early 1890s and seemed the American counterpart to Rudyard Kipling and Guy de Maupassant. Like others of his generation, the young Davis seemed an avant-garde figure who would help to shape the character and improve the quality of the nation's belles...