David Graham Phillips

Born in Madison, Indiana, in 1867, he became an American novelist and journalist associated with the muckraker tradition. He studied at DePauw University and Princeton, then built a career in newspapers before becoming widely known for both fiction and investigative writing.

His most famous nonfiction work was The Treason of the Senate, a 1906 series in Cosmopolitan that attacked corruption in the U.S. Senate. The series was influential enough that later reference works connect it with the reform movement that helped lead to the Seventeenth Amendment, which established the direct election of senators.

Alongside his journalism, he wrote popular novels, often focused on power, money, and social ambition. His life ended violently in New York City in January 1911, when he was shot and killed at the age of 43, leaving behind a body of work that captures both the energy and the anger of the Progressive Era.