David Graham Phillips, the son of a prominent figure in 19th-century Madison, Wisconsin, initially made a name for himself as a reporter in Cincinnati and New York, where he held an editorial position at The New York World.
Despite being unfairly neglected today, Phillips gained significant recognition as a muckraker, with his most notable work being "The Treason of the Senate", a series of articles exposing political corruption in the U.S. Senate. These articles, published in Cosmopolitan magazine between March and November 1906, are credited with contributing to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of senators.
Phillips' beliefs, both political and otherwise, frequently influenced the plots of his novels. His first novel, "The Great God Success" (1901),tells the story of a respected and influential newspaperman who compromises his values by selling out to coal interests.
A remarkably prolific writer, Phillips produced 25 volumes of fiction in just nine years before being tragically shot while strolling outside Gramercy Park. His murderer, a troubled individual who accused Phillips of attacking him in his fiction, took his own life at the scene.
Phillips' magnum opus, "Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise" (1917),is a sprawling narrative that chronicles the descent into and subsequent escape from prostitution of a young woman. Due to the novel's controversial subject matter, it was not published during Phillips' lifetime.
