H.L. DavisArticle Free Pass H.L. Davis, in full Harold Lenoir
Davis (born Oct. 18, 1896, Yoncalla, Ore., U.S.—died Oct. 31,
1960, San Antonio, Texas), American novelist and poet who wrote
realistically about the West, rejecting the stereotype of the
cowboy as hero. Davis worked as a cowboy, typesetter, and
surveyor and in other jobs before being recognized for his
writing. He first received recognition for his poems, written as
imitations of the poetry of Detlev von Liliencron, a 19th-
century German poet. Later Davis was encouraged by H.L. Mencken
to try prose, and the results appeared in American Mercury. In
1932 Davis went to Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he
stayed there to write Honey in the Horn (1935), which won a
Pulitzer Prize in 1936. This novel secured Davis’ reputation as
a novelist of the West whose slow-moving books explore the magic
of landscape. Plot remains secondary to the quiet overall
portrait of the era when the last pioneers flooded Oregon. Davis
mistrusted heroics and instead wro