Richard Beale Davis
Richard Beale Davis was an American academic who specialized in the history of the Southern United States, with a focus on its literature and intellectual history. His works include the 1978 book Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, which was awarded the National Book Award for history and several other accolades. He taught at the University of Virginia, University of South Carolina, and University of Tennessee, among other places.
Davis was born in Accomac, Virginia to a family with local religious and academic connections. He began teaching in the 1920s, receiving his master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1933 and his PhD in 1936. He joined the University of South Carolina as an associate professor of English in 1940, taking leave during the Second World War to teach for the United States Navy. Davis returned to South Carolina and then joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee. While there, he was involved with the James D. Hoskins Library and the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He was made an Alumni Distinguished Service Professor in 1962 and retired from teaching fifteen years later. During this time, he held several fellowships and was a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Davis's most-celebrated work was his 1978 book Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763, a three-volume study of the history and culture of the American South. According to Jack P. Greene, it was the "single most comprehensive description ever undertaken of the cultural life of any segment of Britain's early modern American empire". Davis's reputation as a scholar was solidified through his extensive body of work, with Leo Lemay referring to him as "the greatest modern authority on early Southern literature". Similar views were offered by Louis D. Rubin Jr., praising the way he "decisively chartered and explored the colonial southern literary scene".
Early life and education
Richard Beale Davis was born in Accomac, Virginia, on June 3, 1907. His mother was Margaret Josephine, and his father was Henry Woodhouse Davis, a Methodist minister across Virginia. He had two sisters, Virginia Holmes and Mary Eleanor. His paternal great-grandfather was Williams Thomas Davis, founding president of the Southern Female College in Petersburg, Virginia. The family's papers are held by the library at the University of Virginia.Davis received his undergraduate degree from Randolph–Macon College in 1927. His father had graduated from the same college in 1903. In 1933, Davis received a master's degree from the University of Virginia, and in 1936 they awarded him a PhD.
On August 25, 1936, Davis married Lois Camp Bullard at his parents' house in Franklin, Virginia.
Academic career
Following his undergraduate degree, Davis taught at McGuire's University School in Richmond, Virginia until 1930. In a review of a book about the school, Davis spoke briefly of his time teaching there. From 1930 until 1932, he taught at Randolph-Macon Academy. Following his MA, he taught at the University of Virginia until 1936. He then taught for four years at the Fredericksburg Teachers College, holding the position of associate professor of English. In 1940, Davis joined the University of South Carolina as an associate professor in the English department.During the Second World War, he served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1943, he held the rank of Lieutenant. He was executive officer of the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Emory and Henry College. He then served as commanding officer of the Navy Academic Refresher Unit at the Northwestern State College of Louisiana. In January 1946, the Naval Station at Northwestern was decommissioned, having trained around 4,000 Navy personnel in three years. Davis was discharged from the Navy at the same time with the rank of Lieutenant. Following the war, he returned to the University of South Carolina, and was promoted to a full professorship in June 1946.
In 1947, he joined the University of Tennessee. In 1962, he was made an Alumni Distinguished Service professor. While there, he was heavily involved with the James D. Hoskins Library, working with the acquisitions department to identify possible purchases. From 1949 until 1971, he served as chairman of the library's Committee on Special Documents. He was also a member of the Faculty Library Committee from 1958 to 1970.
Davis held various other positions during his time at the University of Tennessee, serving a year as a Fulbright professor at the University of Oslo in 1955 and another year as a US State Department lecturer in India in 1957. In 1955, he was awarded a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library and a Doctor of Letters by Randolph-Macon College. In 1946, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for post-military service scholars. He received a second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959.
In 1977, Davis retired from teaching. He received a Festschrift upon his retirement, titled Essays in Early Virginia Literature Honoring Richard Beale Davis.
Group memberships
Davis was associated with several historical and literature-focused groups, representing his academic interests and those further afield. In 1955, Davis was elected vice-president of the newly formed branch of the American Studies Association for Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1958, he was elected to the executive council of the nationwide ASA. The same year, he served on the Regional Advisory Board for the Old Southwest Region of the Bibliographical Society of America. In 1959, he was elected vice-chairman of the Southern Humanities Conference, and served as its chairman in 1960. In 1968, Davis began serving a two-year term on the executive council of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. He was elected its first president in the same year.In 1972, Davis was made an honorary member of the Virginia Historical Society, having contributed to the group's journal for several years. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society the following year, later receiving a certificate from them upon his retirement from teaching. He attended a single meeting of the elite group, in October 1974. In 1975, Davis was a founding member of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society. He had taught courses on Hawthorne since the 1940s.
In 1965, Davis served as president for the University of Tennessee's new Phi Beta Kappa chapter, Epsilon of Tennessee. He began writing for the society's magazine The Key Reporter in 1967, reviewing books in American culture and history.
Modern Language Association
In 1952, Davis served as secretary of the American Literature section of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. The following year, he served as chairman of the section. He served on the executive committee of SAMLA from 1963 until 1967, serving as vice-president in 1964 and president the following year. During 1977, he served on its Fiftieth Anniversary Committee.Following the creation of the Modern Language Association's Early American Literature Group in the 1960s, Davis was elected to sit on its executive committee. He later served as chairman of its nominating and advisory committee. In 1977, the group named him as an Honored Scholar.
Davis served on the executive committee of the MLA-affiliated Center for Editions of American Authors. He also served on the MLA's standing committee on copyright during the early 1970s.
Writing career
In 1939, Davis published his first book, a biography titled Francis Walker Gilmer: Life and Learning in Jefferson's Virginia. Gilmer, a lawyer, had been hired by Thomas Jefferson to secure European faculty members for the newly founded University of Virginia. Davis had previously written a PhD thesis on Gilmer with the title "The Life, Letters, and Essays of Francis Walker Gilmer: A Study in Virginia Literary Culture in the First Quarter of the Nineteenth Century". The book was praised by Dumas Malone for being "the fullest and best account" of his life. G. Glenwood Clark praised its detailed index, but criticised the "gross carelessness in proof-reading, exasperating omission of words and phrases and frequent transpositions of whole sentences". In 1946, Davis published a further work on Gilmer titled Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Francis Walker Gilmer, 1814-1826. The work had been composed after the discovery of letters between the two men. Dumas Malone noted the benefit of having both sides of correspondence published in one place and praised the book's focus on both men and Gilmer's "poignant human story".In 1950, Davis worked with Fredson Bowers to edit a bibliography of the Elizabethan writer and traveller George Sandys. He went on to publish a biography of Sandys in 1955, titled George Sandys, Poet-Adventurer: A Study in Anglo-American Culture in the Seventeenth Century. Davis's reference works continued with the first published edition of Thomas Holley Chivers' Life of Poe in 1952, and a collection of historical writing by Augustus Foster in 1954. In 1955, he published a monograph on José Correia da Serra. Following its publication, he donated 128 items of research material to the library of the American Philosophical Society.
In 1961, Davis published two books: a collection of lectures by Samuel Lorenzo Knapp, originally published as Lectures on American Literature in 1829, and a collection of essays dedicated to John Cunyus Hodges and Alwin Thaler. The books were edited with Ben Harris McClary and John Leon Lievsay respectively. In 1963, he edited a collection of letters and documents by William Fitzhugh. In the same year, he entered the American Association for State and Local History's first manuscript competition, winning first place and a publication deal with the University of North Carolina Press. The manuscript was published under the title Intellectual Life in Jefferson's Virginia, 1790-1830 the following year, and is a study into the intellectual history of Virginia following the American Revolutionary War.
Over the next few years, Davis edited several more reference works, including a monograph on colonial satire, a collection of poems by the clergyman Samuel Davies, and a bibliography titled American Literature Through Bryant, 1585-1830. He published three edited works in 1970: an edition of William Wirt's Letters of the British Spy, an edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish and a collection of Southern writing with C. Hugh Holman and Louis D. Rubin Jr. In 1973, a selection of his articles and essays were published under the title Literature and Society in Early Virginia, 1608–1840.
Davis sat on the editorial board of the group publishing The Complete Works of Washington Irving. The general editors of the group were Henry A. Pochmann, Herbert L. Kleinfeld and Richard D. Rust, and the books were published intermittently from 1969 until 1989.