author
Ulysses Sidney Koons
Best remembered today for a historical novel set around Pennsylvania's Ephrata Cloister, this early-20th-century writer drew on regional religious history and Pennsylvania German culture to tell atmospheric, old-world stories.
1 Audiobook
A Tale of the Kloster: A Romance of the German Mystics of the Cocalico
by Brother Jabez, Ulysses Sidney Koons
About the author
Ulysses Sidney Koons was an American author whose surviving published work points to a strong interest in Pennsylvania German history and religious life. He is credited with A Tale of the Kloster: A Romance of the German Mystics of the Cocalico, a 1904 novel also associated with the name Brother Jabez, and with Harbaugh's Harfe (Harbaugh's Harp).
The record around him is fairly sparse, but digitized library and public-domain sources show that his writing was connected to the cultural world of early-20th-century Pennsylvania German scholarship. One period source lists him as "Ulysses Sidney Koons, LL.B.," suggesting legal training as well as literary interests.
Because so little biographical material is readily confirmed online, he remains a somewhat elusive figure today. That mystery adds a little extra charm to his work, which preserves a distinctly regional slice of American religious and cultural history.