[Gutenberg 5980] • Kent Knowles: Quahaug

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).