Richard Harding Davis was an American journalist, fiction and drama writer who is best remembered for becoming the first American war correspondent to cover the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War, and WWI. His writing considerably helped Theodore Roosevelt's political career. He also played a significant effect in the evolution of American magazines. His impact extended to the world of fashion, and he is credited with popularizing the clean-shaven style among males at the start of the twentieth century. Davis was born April 18, 1864, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Rebecca Harding Davis, was a well-known writer in her day. His father, Lemuel Clarke Davis, was a journalist who edited the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Davis attended Episcopal Academy when he was a young man. After an unsatisfactory year at Swarthmore College, Davis relocated to Lehigh University, where his uncle, H. Wilson Harding, was a professor. Davis' first book, a collection of short stories titled The Adventures of My Freshman (1884), was published while he was at Lehigh. Many of the tales had previously appeared in the student magazine, the Lehigh Burr. Davis attended Johns Hopkins University after transferring in 1885.