Tincker, Mary (1833 - 1907)

Genre: General Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories

Tincker, born in Ellsworth on July 18, 1833, was a novelist of considerable popularity following the Civil War. She was already teaching in the public schools when she was 13, and by the time she was 15, her first work was published. She was a volunteer war nurse during the Civil War, serving in Washington, D.C. After this, she lived in Boston, Mass., and in Italy. Tincker died on December 4, 1907 in Boston.

She was raised Protestant but became Catholic (during a time when Catholics were actively persecuted for their beliefs) and many of her novels reflect her Catholic viewpoint.

She wrote short stories for The Catholic World, which serialized her novel The House of Yorke (1872) in 1871-72; this novel dramatized the actual tarring and feathering of a Catholic pastor by local bigots in Maine.

Selected Bibliography

  • A Winged Word; And Other Sketches and Stories (1873)
  • Grapes and Thorns (1874)
  • Six Sunny Months (1877)
  • Signor Monaldini's Niece (part of No Names series 1879)
  • By the Tiber (1881)
  • The Jewel in the Lotos: A Novel (1884)
  • Aurora: A Novel (1886)
  • The Two Coronets (1889)
  • San Salvador (1892)
  • Autumn Leaves: Verse & Story (1898)

Selected Resources