Brave and intrepid motorists of the early 20th Century faced appalling roads, mechanical malady and an often hostile populace as they exercised their exciting new machines. The Scarlet Car, written by Richard Harding Davis in 1907, captures the adventure and uncertainty that was a major part of travel in the early automobile. The period prose in his romantic novelette provides often humorous detail about of the rigors of automotive travel carefully woven through the strands of a classic love story.

Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) was one of the world’s best known war correspondents and The Scarlet Car is arguably the first example of automotive fiction by a serious author. It was skillfully illustrated by the well-respected artist and illustrator Frederic Dorr Steele (1874-1944) whose simple sketches add an additional dimension to Harding’s charming story. The Scarlet Car was originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York in 1908 and stands among the very earliest works about life and adventure with the automobile. This edition of The Scarlet Car has been published by Demontreville Press, Inc., to commemorate and recognize the 100th anniversary of the beginning of automotive fiction.

 

"Although The Scarlet Car is set in another time- and written in the style of that time- such is Davis's skill that even today's reader is immediately drawn into the story and its era."

 

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