Kent Knowles: Quahaug

by Joseph Crosby Lincoln

Joseph Crosby Lincoln (1870-1944) was an American author of novels, poems, and short stories, many set in a fictionalized Cape Cod. Lincoln's work frequently appeared in popular magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator. Although Lincoln was aware of his contemporary naturalist writers like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser who used American literature to plumb the depths of human nature, he rejected this literary exercise. Lincoln claimed that he was satisfied "spinning yarns" that made readers feel good about themselves and their neighbors. Lincoln's literary portrayal of Cape Cod can be understood as a premodern haven occupied by individuals of old Yankee stock which was offered to readers as an antidote to an America that was undergoing rapid modernization, urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Lincoln was a Republican and a Universalist. Among his famous works are: Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse (1902), Cape Cod Stories (1907), Cy Whittaker's Place (1908), Keziah Coffin (1909), The Depot Master (1910), Cap'n Warren's Wards (1911), and Kent Knowles: Quahaug (1914).

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1914

About the author

Joseph Crosby Lincoln (a.k.a Joseph C. Lincoln) was an American author of novels, poems, and short stories, many set in a fictionalized Cape Cod. Lincoln's work frequently appeared in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator.

Lincoln was aware of contemporary naturalist writers, such as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, who used American literature to plumb the depths of human nature, but he rejected this literary exercise. Lincoln claimed that he was satisfied "spinning yarns" that made readers feel good about themselves and their neighbors. Two of his stories have been adapted to film.

Lincoln was born in Brewster, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, but his mother moved the family to Chelsea, Massachusetts, a manufacturing city outside of Boston, after the death of his father. Lincoln's literary career celebrating "old Cape Cod" can partly be seen as an attempt to return to an Eden from which he had been driven by family tragedy. His literary portrayal of Cape Cod can also be understood as a pre-modern haven occupied by individuals of old Yankee stock which was offered to readers as an antidote to an America that was undergoing rapid modernization, urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Lincoln was a Republican and a Universalist.

Upon becoming successful, Lincoln spent his winters in northern New Jersey, near the center of the publishing world in Manhattan, but summered in Chatham, Massachusetts. In Chatham, he lived in a shingle-style house named "Crosstrees" that was located on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Lincoln died in 1944, at the age of 73, in Winter Park, Florida.