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 American
poet and novelist, best-known as the author of SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
(1915), a series of 'auto-epitaphs' or monologues in free verse,
which often contradicted the pious and optimistic epitaphs written
on gravestones. The book gained Masters a large following and put
him at the vanguard of the Chicago literary renaissance.
"Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure -
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!"
('Petit, the Poet,' from Spoon River Anthology)
Masters was born in Garnett, Kansas. In 1880 his family settled
at Lewistown, Illinois, near Spoon River, where Masters grew up
on his grandfather's farm. Lewistown and Petersburg became models
for the scenes of his poems in Spoon River Anthology. Masters's
father was a lawyer, and did not encourage his son's literary aspirations,
refusing to support studies in this field. He attended Knox College,
and was admitted to the bar in 1891. He moved to Chicago, where
he worked as a lawyer for nearly thirty years. He contracted pneumonia
through overwork and his legal clients started to decrease partly
due to his revealing poems about bigotry and liaisons in Spoon
River arose controversy. After retiring Masters devoted himself
entirely to writing.
During the years in Chicago, Masters married and established his
own law firm. At the same time he continued to write, and became
friends with Harriet Monroe, editor of the Poetry magazine,
Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and other member of the so-called
Chicago Group. This circle meant much to Masters, who was throughout
his life bitter because of the scornful attitude in Lewistown for
his writing.
As a poet Masters made his debut in 1898 with A BOOK OF VERSES.
It was followed by MAXIMILIAN (1902), a drama in blank verse, THE
NEW STAR CHAMBER (1904), a collection of essays, BLOOD OF THE PROPHETS
(1905), and two plays, ALTHEA (1907) and THE BREAD OF IDLENESS (1911).
 In
1909 Masters was introduced to Epigrams from the Greek Anthology,
given him by Marion Reedy, editor of Reedy's Mirror of St.
Louis. This inspired Masters' most famous work, Spoon River Anthology,
realistic and sometimes cynical epitaphs spoken by about 250 persons
buried in the graveyard of a village in the Mid West. "You will
die, no doubt, but die while living / In depths of azure, rapt and
mated, / Kissing the queen-bee, Life!" The original idea for
the book came from his mother, with whom he discussed people they
used to know in the villages. The work first appeared anonymously
in Reedy's Mirror in 1914 and 1915. It was then published
anonymously in book form. A sequel, The New Spoon River,
appeared in 1924, but it was less successful. Spoon River
was Masters's revenge on narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy. It gained
a huge popularity, but shattered his position as a respectable member
of establishment.
When his wife did not grant him a divorce, Masters left his family
and fled in 1921 to Europe. The height of the Chicago renaissance
was passed, and Masters considered it impossible to return back
to his hometown. He moved to New York, and after the divorce was
settled, Masters remarried.
Besides poems, Masters published biographies of Vachel Lindsay,
who was his friend and fellow poet, Mark Twain, whom he depicted
a frustrated genius, and Walt Whitman. His sharply critical study
of the Civil War president Abraham Lincoln (1931) was the only one
of his later books to gain a wider attention. ACROSS SPOON RIVER
(1939) was Masters's autobiography.
Though Masters continued to publish volumes of verse almost yearly,
the quality of his work never reached the level of his masterpiece.
He lived his last years alone in small hotel in New York, and died
in Philadelphia on March 5, 1950.
For further reading: Beyond Spoon River: The Legacy of
Edgar Lee Masters by Ronald Primeau (1981); Edgar Lee Masters
by John H. Wrenn, Margaret Wrenn (1983); Edgar Lee Masters by
Hardin Wallace Masters (1978); Edgar Lee Masters: The Spoon River
Poet and His Critics by John Theodore Flanagan (1974); Last Stands:
Notes from Memory by Hillary Masters (1982) - Chicago Group
(from about 1912 to about 1925): the term is variously used to
include such writers as H.B. Fuller, Theodore Dreiser, Ben Hecht,
Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg. - Other
depictions of small-town life: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg,
Ohio (1919); Sinclair Lewis's Main Street (1920), Thornton Wilder's
Our Town (1938)
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