William Stearns Davis

William Stearns Davis (1877–1930) was an American historian and novelist, professor of history at the University of Minnesota from 1909 to 1927. Educated at Harvard, he published his first historical novel, A Friend of Caesar, while still a student, and followed it with God Wills It, a tale of the First Crusade, A Victor of Salamis, The Friar of Wittenberg and others. His works of popular history, Life on a Mediaeval Barony (1923), A Day in Old Athens and A Day in Old Rome, used the device of an imaginary community to show daily life in a past age, and were widely read in schools.