A prolific writer, Rebecca Harding Davis is credited with over 500 published works. Despite her outpouring of literary works, she was almost entirely forgotten by the time of her death in 1910. However, Davis was rediscovered in the very early 1970s by the feminist writer Tillie Olsen, who found a collection of Davis's works in a junk shop. Olsen quickly recognized the talent and significance of Davis's writings, and personally endeavored to reintroduce Davis's work. In 1972, The Feminist Press published "Life in the Iron-Mills" with Olsen's own biographical interpretation of Davis's life in relation to a selection of her published works. Olsen's non-fiction volume, titled "Silences", was an analysis of authors' silent periods in literature, including writer's blocks, unpublished work, and the problems that working-class writers, and women in particular, have in finding the time to concentrate on their art, and the second part of the book was a study of the work of Davis.