Masters, Edgar Lee

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1869–1950, American poet and biographer, b. Garnett, Kans. He maintained a successful law practice in Chicago from 1892 to 1920. Masters's Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of epitaphs in free verse revealing the secret lives of dead citizens, was acclaimed for its treatment of small-town American life. Less successful volumes that followed include Starved Rock (1919), Domesday Book (1920), Poems of People (1936), and Illinois Poems (1941). His Lincoln the Man (1931) is a bitter and prejudiced attack. Other biographies are Vachel Lindsay (1935), Whitman (1937), and Mark Twain (1938).

Bibliography

See his autobiography Across Spoon River (1936).

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Masters, Edgar Lee

Edgar Lee Masters

(credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; photograph, Arnold Genthe)

(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.

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Masters, Edgar Lee (1868–1950) poet, playwright; born in Garnett, Kans. He studied at Knox College, Ill. (1889), became a lawyer (1891), and practiced in Chicago (1891–1921). He moved to New York upon retirement (1921), and continued to write plays and poetry. His only success was Spoon River Anthology (1915; revised 1916), a volume of "epitaphs," poetic portraits of smalltown Americans.