Masters, Edgar Lee

born Aug. 23, 1869, Garnett, Kan., U.S.

died March 5, 1950, Philadelphia, Pa.

U.S. poet and novelist.

He grew up on his grandfather's farm and became a lawyer in Chicago. He wrote undistinguished poetry and plays before publishing Spoon River Anthology (1915), his major work. Its 245 free-verse epitaphs in the form of monologues are spoken from the grave by the former inhabitants of a fictitious small town, who tell of their bitter, unfulfilled lives in its dreary confines.

Edgar Lee Masters

By courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; photograph, Arnold Genthe

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▪ American poet

born Aug. 23, 1869, Garnett, Kan., U.S.

died March 5, 1950, Philadelphia, Pa.

 American poet and novelist, best known as the author of Spoon River Anthology (1915).

      Masters grew up on his grandfather's farm near New Salem, Ill., studied in his father's law office, and attended Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., for one year. He was admitted to the bar in 1891 and developed a successful law practice in Chicago.

      A volume of his verses appeared in 1898, followed by Maximilian, a drama in blank verse (1902), The New Star Chamber and Other Essays (1904), Blood of the Prophets (1905), and a series of plays issued between 1907 (Althea) and 1911 (The Bread of Idleness).

      If Masters had continued to write along these lines, he would not be remembered, but in 1909 he was introduced to Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Masters was seized by the idea of composing a similar series of free-verse epitaphs in the form of monologues. The result was Spoon River Anthology, in which the former inhabitants of Spoon River speak from the grave of their bitter, unfulfilled lives in the dreary confines of a small town. The community of Spoon River was fictitious; it was compounded of Petersburg and Lewistown, Ill., which Masters had known as a boy. In 1963 a staging of Spoon River Anthology was presented on Broadway.

      Though Masters continued to publish volumes of verse almost yearly, the quality of his work never again rose to the level of the Spoon River Anthology.

      Among his novels are Mitch Miller (1920) and The Nuptial Flight (1923). Masters wrote biographies of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln the Man, 1931, in which Masters' attacks on Lincoln were poorly received by critics and historians), Walt Whitman (1937), and Mark Twain (1938). His best effort in this form is Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America (1935), a study of his friend and fellow poet. Also notable are his autobiography, Across Spoon River (1936), and The Sangamon (1942), a volume in the “Rivers of America” series.

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