Edgar Lee Masters

Spoon River Anthology (Annotated) Edgar Lee Masters

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Masters, Edgar Lee, 1868-1950, The Spoon River Anthology is a collection of 245 free verse epitaphs in the form of monologues. They are spoken from beyond the grave by former residents of a sad and confined small town like the same Masters he had known during his childhood in Illinois. Speakers speak of their hopes and ambitions and of their bitter and unfulfilled lives. The realistic poems were controversial when they were first published, as they contradicted the popular view of small towns as repositories of moral virtue and respectability. The son of a lawyer and attorney himself, he soon moved to Lewistown, Illinois, in an area of the Midwest that would constantly reappear in his poetry. He first worked as an electric power collector, and then traveled to Chicago, where he joined the Kickham Scanlan firm in 1893. He was married twice; in 1898 with Helen M. Jenkins, daughter of a lawyer, of whom she had three children. In 1911 he opened his own law firm, after three hectic years (1908-1911) because of an extramarital relationship and a dispute with attorney Clarence Darrow, of which he was a partner. Two of his children followed in his footsteps; her daughter Marcia was devoted to poetry, and her son Hilary Masters became a novelist.