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.

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

[8] The title page of his wife Ella Winter's Red Virtue: Human Relationships in the New Russia (Victor Gollancz, 1933) carries this quote.

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

In 1927, they relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, the most significant art colony on the Pacific Coast, and settled in a cottage close to the intersection of San Antonio Street and Ocean Avenue.

[11] 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.

[17] Characters on the American crime drama series City on a Hill, which debuted in 2019, make numerous references to Lincoln Steffens.

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).