Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Edgar Lee Masters, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2798 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A superbly researched and written biographical portrait
Edgar Lee Masters is the author of "Spoon River Anthology", one of the most widely read and discussed volumes of American poetry ever written. Biographer Herbert Russell reveals that Masters was also a successful Chicago lawyer who detested the practice of law, married twice and constantly pursuing other women, and at the same time, one of America's most prolific authors, publishing 53 books during his lifetime. Yet only one of works afforded him lasting recognition. Russell draws from Master's diaries, correspondences, unpublished chapters of a 1936 autobiography, and information from his two wives, children, lovers, and contemporaries (including Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Harriet Monroe, William Jennings Bryan, and Clarence Darrow) to reveal the poet's many relationships, impulsive business decisions, and artistic struggles. Edgar Lee Masters is a superbly researched and written biographical portrait of a man who changed the course of American poetry, yet was unable to achieve personal fulfillment and artistic success within his own life.

Edgar Lee Masters - a biography by Herbert Russell
This is the best and most complete biography of one of America's great poets. Not only has Russell delivered a meticulously researched story in full, he writes in a very forthright and engaging style.This is the ESSENTIAL Edgar Lee Masters source.For those not familiar with Masters there can be no better introduction.Once I started reading it, I found the book hard to put down. ... Read more

Book Description
Here are Masters's dramatic monologues written in free verse about a fictional Midwestern town called Spoon River.The dead, "sleeping on the hill" in their village cemetery, awaken to tell the truth about their lives, toppling the myth of the moral superiority of small-town life. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (39)

Spoon River Anthology(signet classics)
This is incredile writing, Masters ability to give his characters a voice that reachs ones heart and mind simply amazing. Ernest Hyde, is an excellent example of this as well as Amanda Barker,Yee Bow and many others. These are the names of some the voices that Masters sets free. There dry innocent voices are oddly humorous and this is what i find the most refreshing.This is free verse at its finest.

Spoon River flows through humanity
Masters' Spoon River Anthology is as poignant today as when it was written. Part glimpse of history, part poetic essay on the eternal frailties of the human animal, the epitaphs are riveting from first to last. Read it. Then get a spoken word recording. Then read it again. You'll find these characters live on.

American Writing At Its Best
There IS an actual Spoon River in Fulton County, IL but no town by that name. Masters was speaking about that area because he was writing about what he knew. Like any great literature, it transcends time and place to have more universal meaning. Some characters are small town folk, others aspired to grow beyond and were thwarted by circumstance, while still others grew beyond Spoon River and were brought back home from their travels for eternal rest. "All, all are sleeping on the hill". Each character narrates his or her own brief story in a free verse poem, one per page. Some stories intersect as characters mention each other. It's interesting to cross reference characters in this regard. Sometimes the compliment of mention isn't returned. Upon first inspection, this might seem to be a rather morbid format. However, the characters speak more about their lives and human struggles than they do about death. Theirs are timeless tales about joy, accomplishment, pain, betrayal, discovery, loneliness and atonement.
This book is a real classic. It was given to me for my seventeenth birthday and I've collected several different volumes of it since then including one signed by the author. I think the dramatic format might still catch the attention of alot of teenagers and give them pause to reflect upon the deeper meanings in life. It's one of those must read's for anyone looking to read the American Classics.

We Are The Dead Of Spoon River...
Upon its release Edgar Lee Masters' collection of free verse poems must have shaken the literary universe. In an era when the mores of polite Victorianism were still lingering in an America concerned with all things proper, Masters dared pen a book in which the dead of a small Midwestern town lie not in a state of reservation before Christian resurrection, but in a condition of stasis, ruminating on their lives and speaking with candor on all they may have done. The dead who speak from their graves in these wondrous poems reveal their secrets, their unfulfilled dreams, their disapprobation at humanity's conduct. The dead are to varying degrees wise, ironic, witty, bitter, content, confused, and moralistic. They have regrets, they mock the values of we who are living, they seethe with longing, they confess universal truths at long last, they await they know not what, the arrival of eternity or a continuation of their suspended state of evaluation, in conditions of calm, content, fright, or regretless joy. There is one thing none of those who have passed away from the streets of Spoon River to its hallowed acre on the hill, are and that is quiet.

One of a dozen or so American poetical achievements that most fully justifies our nation's pride in its own literary accomplishments.

Very interesting
This has lots of background and biographical information.Plus it includes other materials.Well done. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the paper.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Formative factors in Masters' creative genius
This frank verbal self-portrait reveals the forming of the epitaphal poet. His early years are seen against the backdrop of his midwestern roots, his law training, and emergent writing. Particularly of interest are hisanecdotes of life in the Chicago of Clarence Darrow, the White City, andhis romantic ventures. The text gives insight into what formed the voicesof Spoon River Anthology. It's haunting, wistful and funny.Tendernostalgia, particularly for Illinoisans.

Masters: The Author for The Everyday Man
Best known for his 1915 bestseller "Spoon River Anthology", Masters writes in a style simple and intimate; something that almost anyone can read.

This personal portrait paints a picture of the attorney/author's life, loves, pinnacles, and misfortunes, and gives us a clear view of life as it was at the turn of the century.

Born in Garnett, Kansas, and raised in the Petersburg, Illinois region, Masters tells the story of the famous and not-so-famous people who touched his life and left their marks on this celebrated author. ... Read more

Book Description
A family memoir that includes in its cast of four characters theauthor's father, Edgar Lee Masters, the poet of Spoon River Anthology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Truth of the Masters
Hilary Masters' memoir Last Stands exhibits uniqueness in writing with a universal appeal.Whether it be upper class zeal, lower class pride, war stories, grandparents, grandchildren, health, humor, abuse, neglect, tolerance, strength, or even food, there is something in it for everyone.

Overall, Last Stands is a patchwork piece--a memoir and indirect autobiography glittered with several familial biographies.Masters constantly switches scenes and elements of focus, but he overlaps his storyline, keeping the reader grounded, despite a sequence of simultaneous events.Thus, history is tied together in a busy but logical manner.

Although Masters reveals disturbing events, he adds tidbits of humor to lighten the mood.In addition, he compares and contrasts fictitious characters, such as Odysseus, to events in his own life--a technique that grants him boundless points-of-view.Furthermore, his ingenuity unfolds with his use of secondary sources: letters, poems, epitaphs, and invitations.Finally, his use of dialogue carries the story where it might otherwise seem bland.

Even where memory falls short in the author's mind, he entertains the reader with his image of how a situation could have happened.Thus, Masters offers creative details of a picture that might have been there, and even if it wasn't, he proves that the truth is as real as the writer's true imagination. ... Read more