Life
Davis was born April 30, 1877 in the presidential mansion of Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, where his mother's father had been president for the twenty-two years preceding his birth. His father was Congregational minister William Vail Wilson Davis; his mother Francis Stearns. Due both to childhood illnesses and to family moves occasioned by his father's call to new congregations, Davis was largely educated at home until he entered Worcester Academy in 1895. In 1897 he matriculated at Harvard. Fascinated by maps and by historical figures, he had begun writing stories for himself while still at home. He now turned this experience and his desire to humanize history to writing historical novels, the first of which, A Friend of Caesar, was published in the year he graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He continued at Harvard, being the first first-year graduate student to receive the Harvard Thayer Graduate Scholarship, and earning his A.M. in 1901 and his PhD in 1905. During these same years he continued publishing historical fiction.
In 1904, Davis began his formal teaching career, beginning as a lecturer at Radcliffe College while finishing his doctorate. He continued thereafter at Beloit College (instructor, 1906–07), Oberlin College (Assistant Professor of Medieval and Modern European History, 1907–1909), and finally at the University of Minnesota (Professor of History, 1909–1927). “He was an excellent teacher with the ability to put life into his lectures.” His steady output of non-fiction in both history and the historical background to contemporary world affairs began with his time at Minnesota. Professionally, he was a member of the American Historical Association.
In 1911, he married Alice Williams Redfield of Minneapolis. He retired from teaching in 1927, moving back to New England and taking up residence in Exeter, New Hampshire, with the intention of devoting all of his time to writing. However, he died of pneumonia following an operation at the age of 52 on February 15, 1930.
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