David Graham Phillips
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David Graham Phillips (October 31, 1867 – January 24, 1911), was an American journalist and novelist.
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[edit] Early life and career
Phillips was born in Madison, Indiana. After graduating high school Phillips entered Asbury College following which he degreed from College of New Jersey in 1887.
After completing his education, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati, Ohio before moving on to New York City where he was employed as a reporter for The Sun from 1890 to 1893, then columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. In his spare time, he wrote a novel, The Great God Success, that was published in 1901. The royalty income enabled him to work as a freelance journalist while continuing to write fiction. Writing articles for various prominent magazines, he began to develop a reputation as a competent investigative journalist. Phillips' novels often commented on social issues of the day and frequently chronicled events based on his real-life journalistic experiences. He was considered a Progressive and a muckraker.
Phillips wrote an article in Cosmopolitan in March 1906, called "The Treason of the Senate", exposing campaign contributors being rewarded by certain members of the U. S. Senate. The story launched a scathing attack on Rhode Island senator Nelson W. Aldrich, and brought Phillips a great deal of national exposure. This and other similar articles helped lead to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, initiating popular instead of state-legislature election of U. S. senators.
[edit] Death
Phillips' reputation cost him his life in January 1911, when he was shot outside the Princeton Club at Gramarcy Park in New York City. The killer was a musician named Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, from a prominent Philadelphia family (his grandfather had been Admiral Louis Goldsborough in the American Civil War). Goldsborough believed that Phillips' novel, The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig, had cast literary aspersions on his family. When confronting Phillips, Goldsborough yelled, "Here you go!", and after Phillips collapsed he yelled, "And here I go!", shooting himself in the head. Phillips died a day later in the hospital. A 1992 novel by Daniel D. Victor, "The Seventh Bullet," imagines an investigation into Phillips' murder by Sherlock Holmes.
Following Phillips' death, his sister Carolyn organized his final manuscript for posthumous publication as Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. In 1931, that book would be made into an MGM motion picture of the same name starring Greta Garbo and Clark Gable.
He is interred in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
[edit] Literature
- F. T. Cooper, Some American Story-Tellers, (New York, 1911)
- J. C. Underwood, Literature and Insurgency, (New York, 1914)
[edit] External links
- Works by David Graham Phillips at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about David Graham Phillips in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- David Graham Phillips: bibliography, links, and information
- Photo of Phillips at Find a Grave
- Phillips, David Graham, "The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, The Head of It All," Cosmopolitan, March 1906.
