Lincoln Steffens
Joseph Lincoln Steffens (April 6, 1866 – August 9, 1936) was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called "Tweed Days in St. Louis",[1] that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities. He is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his leftist values.
Lincoln Steffens
April 6, 1866
August 9, 1936 (aged 70)
- New York Evening Post (until 1905)
- McClure's Magazine (until 1906)
- The American Magazine (1906 onward)
- Part of the muckraking trio at the turn of the century
- Articles and books, including The Shame of the Cities. See Works.
Josephine Bontecou (m. 1881–1911), Ella Winter (m. 1924)
1
Laura Steffens Suggett (sister)
Early life[edit]
Steffens was born in San Francisco, California, the only son and eldest of four children of Elizabeth Louisa (Symes) Steffens and Joseph Steffens. He was raised largely in Sacramento, the state capital; the Steffens family mansion, a Victorian house on H Street bought from merchant Albert Gallatin in 1887, would become the California Governor's Mansion in 1903.[2]
Steffens attended the Saint Matthew's Episcopal Day School, where he frequently clashed with the school's founder and director, stern disciplinarian, Alfred Lee Brewer.[3] He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and then went to Europe to study.[4]
Death[edit]
Steffens died of a heart condition[15] on August 9, 1936, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.[15]
In 2011, Kevin Baker of The New York Times lamented that "Lincoln Steffens isn't much remembered today".[16]
In popular culture[edit]
Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the Danny DeVito movie Jack the Bear (1993).
Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.[17]
Characters on the American crime drama series City on a Hill, which debuted in 2019, make numerous references to Lincoln Steffens.[18][19]
The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is the favorite book of one of the members of The Group in Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel of the same title.[20]
Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the Joseph McElroy novel Women and Men. And it is mentioned as a favorite by Marilyn Monroe in her Autobiography "My Story" (she reads it during the making of All About Eve and is warned by Joseph L. Mankiewicz to not tell anyone due to possible Communist ties).
Lincoln Steffens is a somewhat frustrated witness to the political intrigue of the remapping of Europe following WW1 in the 1940 novel World's End by Upton Sinclair.[21] In World's End, Sinclair refers to Steffens as being a Muckraker. The same label has been assigned to Sinclair himself.