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| 1869 - 1950 Edgar Lee Masters wrote dozens of books, but is best known for The Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of poetic pieces that exposed the dark side of small-town life. Each piece reveals the motivations and inner life of a certain type of character found in a fictional small town. This masterpiece brought him out of obscurity, winning him the admiration of Ezra Pound and Carl Sandburg, and inspiring many up-and-coming writers. Unfortunately, although Masters continued to publish poems, novels, and nonfiction for the rest of his life, he never again lived up to the early success of "Spoon River." Masters was born in Kansas and grew up in Petersburg and Lewiston, Ill.. He attended Knox College, where he acquired the training he needed to become a successful lawyer as well as a skilled writer. While working as one of Clarence Darrow's law partners in Chicago, he began publishing his writing, using pseudonyms to keep his writing and legal careers separate. Along with Ben Hecht, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Keith Preston, Llewellyn Jones, Vincent Starrett, and Lew Sarett, Masters was part of the "Chicago Group," a circle of well-known authors working during the city's "literary renaissance" after World War I. Among Masters' works published after Spoon River are The Great Valley, a volume of poetry showing Browning's influence, and Lincoln, the Man, an iconoclastic biography or Abraham Lincoln. Critics find his later works unpolished, and - especially in the case of his biographies - overly influenced by Masters's Jeffersonian political views. Selected Works:
- A Book of Verses, 1898
- Maximillian: A Play in Five Acts, 1902
- The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, 1904
- The Blood of the Prophets, (written under pseudonym Dexter Wallace) 1905
- Althea: A Play in Four Acts, 1907
- The Trifler: A Play, 1908
- The Leaves of the Tree: A Play, 1909
- Eileen: A Play in Three Acts, 1910
- Songs and Sonnets, (written under pseudonym Webster Ford) 1910
- The Locket: A Play in Three Acts, 1910
- The Tread of Idleness: A Play in Four Acts, 1911
- Spoon River Anthology, 1915
- Songs and Satires, 1916
- The Great Valley, poems, 1917
- Starved Rock, 1919
- Mitch Miller, 1920
- Domesday Book, 1920
- The Open Sea, 1921
- Children of the Market Place, 1922
- Skeeters Kirby, 1923
- The Nuptial Flight, 1923
- Mirage, 1924
- The New Spoon River, 1924
- Selected Poems, 1925
- Lee: A Dramatic Poem, 1926
- Kit O'Brien, 1927
- Levy Mayer and the New Industrial Era, 1927
- Jack Kelso: A Dramatic Poem, 1928
- The Fate of the Jury: An Epilogue to Domesday Book, 1929
- Gettysburg, Manila, Acoma, 1930
- Lichee Nuts, 1930
- Lincoln, the Man, 1931
- Godbey: A Dramatic Poem, 1931
- The Serpent in the Wilderness, 1931
- The Tale of Chicago, 1933
- Dramatic Dialogues: Four Short Plays in Verse, 1934
- Richmond: A Dramatic Poem, 1934
- Invisible Landscapes, 1935
- Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America, 1935
- Poems of People, 1936
- The Golden Fleece of California: Poetry, 1936
- Across Spoon River: An Autobiography, 1937
- Whitman, 1937
- The Tide of Time, 1937
- The New World, 1937
- Hymn to the Unknown God, 1937
- Mark Twain: A Portrait, 1938
- More People, 1939
- Illinois Poems, 1941
- The Sangamon, 1942
- Along the Illinois,
1942
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