20 Facts About Lincoln Steffens

Joseph Lincoln Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century.

Lincoln Steffens launched a series of articles in McClure's, called "Tweed Days in St Louis", that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities.

Lincoln Steffens is remembered for investigating corruption in municipal government in American cities and for his leftist values.

Lincoln Steffens 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.

Lincoln Steffens attended St Mathews, where he frequently clashed with the school's founder and director, stern disciplinarian, Alfred Lee Brewer.

Lincoln Steffens began his journalism career at the New York Commercial Advertiser in the 1890s, before moving to the New York Evening Post.

Lincoln Steffens specialized in investigating government and political corruption, and two collections of his articles were published as The Shame of the Cities and The Struggle for Self-Government.

Lincoln Steffens wrote The Traitor State, which criticized New Jersey for patronizing incorporation.

Lincoln Steffens tried to provoke outrage with examples of corrupt governments throughout urban America.

Lincoln Steffens was a member of the California Writers Project, a New Deal program.

Lincoln Steffens married the twenty-six-year-old socialist writer Leonore Sophie Winter in 1924 and moved to Italy, where their son Peter was born in San Remo.

Ella and Lincoln Steffens soon became controversial figures in the leftist politics of the region.

When John O'Shea, one of the local Carmel artists and a friend of the couple, exhibited his study of "Mr Steffens' soul", an image which resembled a grotesque daemon, Lincoln took a certain pride in the drawing and enjoyed the publicity it generated.

Lincoln Steffens died of a heart condition on August 9,1936, in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

In 2011, Kevin Baker of The New York Times lamented that "Lincoln Steffens isn't much remembered today".

Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the Danny DeVito movie Jack the Bear.

Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.

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.

Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is mentioned in the Joseph McElroy novel Women and Men.

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.