After leaving the Irish College in Paris in 1880, Davis began submitting fiction and verse to the Irishman, eventually joining the staff of United Ireland.
[1] Davis unknowingly became associated with a number of British agents and spies in 1883 during the time he was connected to the New York newspaper, United Irishman.
In early 1887 he was given permission to return to France,[1] where he was offered a position as an editor of a new, bilingual Irish nationalist newspaper based in Paris by James MacAdaras, but this paper was never established.
[2] In the summer of 1887, Davis moved to Dublin joining the Nation as the literary editor, also publishing poetry in United Ireland.
Davis provided Michael Davitt with intelligence about the activities of Richard Pigott in Paris in January 1889, which aided in the exposé of his duplicitous actions before the Times special commission.
Alongside his 1889 volume of poetry, Davis published poems in Dublin University Review (April 1886) and Lays and lyrics of the Pan-Celtic Society (1889).
[1] Davis left for the United States after the Nation closed in July 1891, going on to publish with a number of literary magazine there and the Chicago Citizen.