Samuel Post Davis, like other authors of the short-lived Comstock era of Nevada such as Dan De Quille, Joseph Thompson Goodman, and Rollin Mallory Daggett, has been seriously neglected and undervalued. An influential figure in Nevada politics and one of the state's most respected journalists, Davis left a legacy of probity, courage, and effectiveness. He was best known in his own time for his journalism and humor, but his fiction, poetry, and drama as well as his writing as a historian and memoirist are likely to provide the enduring foundation for his evolving reputation.

Assessing Davis's career is complicated by the lack of a full bibliography of all of his writing. He wrote far more than the two books he published during his life, but because he wrote mainly for periodicals, it is difficult to determine how much he published or when and where his works first appeared...