Background
Harold Lenoir Davis was born on October 18, 1894, in Douglas County, Oregon, United States, the son of James Alexander and Ruth (Bridges) Davis. His rural upbringing strongly influenced the tone and color of his writings as an adult.
Harold Lenoir Davis was born on October 18, 1894, in Douglas County, Oregon, United States, the son of James Alexander and Ruth (Bridges) Davis. His rural upbringing strongly influenced the tone and color of his writings as an adult.
Davis graduated from high school in 1912 in The Dalles, Oregon. In 1918, he was drafted into the army. He was discharged from the army in December of 1918.
In the service Harold worked as a clerk at Fort McDowell, California, and it was here that he First began to write poetry. His early poems contained vibrant descriptions of Oregon's natural landscape. They first appeared in Poetry magazine in 1919, and they drew praises from the likes of Carl Sandburg and Robinson Jeffers.
After discharging from the army Davis returned to The Dalles, where he continued to write poetry as he worked various odd jobs. He also began making the acquaintance of other writers, such as James Stevens - with whom he co-wrote a pamphlet that attacked the pomposity and pretension of university English professors and other ivory tower literary elites - and H. L. Mencken, who advised him to try his hand at writing fiction. In 1926, Davis's short stories began to appear in American Mercury, which was published by Mencken. In 1928 Davis moved from Oregon to Winslow, Washington. Davis continued to write sketches and short stories which appeared in American Mercury, the Saturday Evening Post, and Collier 's. He published his first novel, Honey in the Horn, in 1935. Davis' next book was a volume of poetry, Proud Riders and Other Poems, published in 1942.
After the success of Honey in the Horn, the Davis moved to Napa, California. During this time, Davis was also embroiled in a dispute with his publisher, Harper and Brothers, concerning the contract terms for his second novel. In 1947, Davis switched to another publisher, William Morrow of New York. His second novel, Harp of a Thousand Strings, appeared that year. Harp is a complex, interweaving, allegorical story of the travels of three American seamen and one Frenchmen during the time of the French Revolution.
Davis' third novel, Beulah Land, published in 1949, was the story of a young half-Indian girl and an Indian foundling white boy, and their journeys together up and down the Mississippi River and across the West.
Davis's fourth novel, 1952's Winds of Morning, is widely considered his best novel. Davis published a collection of short stories and sketches, Team Bells Woke Me, in 1953. His final novel, The Distant Music, a family chronicle set in southeastern Oregon, came out in 1957.
In 1959, shortly before Davis' death in 1960, a collection of his essays and one short story were published in a volume titled Kettle of Fire. The reviews were generally laudatory.
In 1960 he died of a heart attack in San Antonio, Texas.
On May 25, 1928 Harold married Marion Lay with whom he later divorced. In 1953 he remarried, to Elizabeth Martin del Campo.