His early poems, short stories, and several of his novels, including his best-selling Bruvver Jim’s Baby and The Furnace of Gold, are part of the Sagebrush School of American literature.
Tutored to be a lawyer by his stepfather, Samuel Post Davis, he passed the Nevada bar in 1890, but moved to San Francisco, California to pursue a career in journalism and as a writer.
After his mid-1890s move to New York City, his popularity grew with stories—on cowboys and prospectors, lost civilizations and ape-men, detectives and automobiles, and questions on race, modern sex, and political commentary—serialized in newspapers and major magazines such as Harpers, Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and McClures.
After returning to the United States they resided in California and, primarily, New York City, with visits to his Nevada home for research trips.
One early Nevada historian stated that Phil Mighells, “probably the most brilliant creative genius of the younger set, was a voluminous writer, contributing to almost every branch of literature.”[5] On June 17, 1896, at age 27, he married the 43 year old widow Ella Sterling Cummins, a respected California author.