1905. American writer, Phillips worked as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati and New York City, rising to editorial rank on the New York World, for which he wrote until 1902. He became noted as a muckraker and was famous as the author of a series of sensational articles exposing corruption in the U.S. Senate that appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine. Phillips's novels, powerful although often crude, deal with corruptive influences in society and general social problems, such as the status of women. He came to an untimely death when he was murdered by a young musician who accused him of having cast literary slurs on his family. The Plum Tree begins: We can hold out six months longer, -at least six months. My mother's tone made the six months stretch encouragingly into six long years. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.