Charles Felton Pidgin

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1844, Charles Felton Pidgin built a career that reached far beyond fiction. He worked for many years with the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor and later became its chief, giving him a strong grounding in public life, research, and the everyday concerns of working people.

As a novelist, he is best known for Quincy Adams Sawyer (1900), a book that became a major success and was later adapted for the stage and for silent film. He also wrote historical romances, detective fiction, and other popular works, showing an interest in both American history and the rhythms of ordinary New England life.

Pidgin died in 1923, but he remains an appealingly distinctive figure: a writer who was also a statistician and inventor, and who brought that wide experience into his books. For listeners today, his work offers a lively window into the tastes, humor, and storytelling style of turn-of-the-century America.