Edgar Lee Masters

Masters, Edgar Lee 

Born Aug. 23, 1869, in Garnett, Kan.; died Mar. 5, 1950, in Philadelphia, Pa. American writer.

Until 1920, Masters worked as a lawyer. He gained fame for his Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of epitaphs that describes the manners and monotonous existence of a small provincial town. He was the author of novels and of fictionalized biographies of A. Lincoln (1931) and W. Whitman (1937) that are not free from exaggerated sensationalism.

WORKS

Mitch Miller. London, 1920.
The New Spoon River. New York, 1924.
Mark Twain. New York, 1938.
The Sangamon. New York, 1942.
In Russian translation:
Slyshu, poet Amerika. Moscow, 1960.

REFERENCES

Popov, I. “Sem Dzhinks na sverkhsrochnoi.” Znamia, 1970, no. 7.
Bruks, V. V. Pisatel’ iamerikanskaia zhizn’ vol. 2. Moscow, 1971. Pages 115-18.
Derleth, A. Three Literary Men. New York-Copenhagen, 1963.