Biographical/Historical note
Edgar Lee Masters was born in
Garnett, Kansas, on August 23, 1868, but soon after his birth his family moved to
Lewistown, Illinois, the town near Springfield where Masters grew up. His youth was marred by his father's financial struggles with a faltering law practice and reluctance to support his son's literary interests. Masters attended
Knox College for a year but was then forced by the family's finances to withdraw and continue his studies privately. He was admitted to the bar in 1891, and he moved to
Chicago in 1892, where he found a job collecting bills for the
Edison Company. He gradually built a successful law practice, and for eight years he was the partner of
Clarence Darrow. In 1898 he published his first collection,
A Book of Verses, and married
Helen Jenkins. His first books, some of which were published under pseudonyms, showed strong influences from the English Romantic poets and Edgar Allan Poe.
During this time Masters considered writing a novel about the relationships of people in a small Illinois town. This idea was transformed through a chance acquaintance. Masters had been submitting poems to
Marion Reedy, the editor of
Reedy's Mirror in
St. Louis. While Reedy didn't publish these poems, he kept up the correspondence and gave Masters a copy of
J. W. Mackail's
Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. After reading these, Masters felt the challenge to adopt the idea for his novel into this form, combining free verse, epitaph, realism, and cynicism to write
Spoon River Anthology, a collection of monologues from the dead in an Illinois graveyard. The
Spoon River of the title is the name of an actual river in Illinois, but the town combines Lewistown, where Masters grew up, and Petersburg, where his grandparents lived. These poems were serialized in Reedy's Mirror from 1914-15, and then discovered by
Harriet Monroe, the editor of
Poetry, who helped Masters issue a complete edition in 1915. Spoon River Anthology was wildly successful, going through several editions rapidly and becoming one of the most popular books of poetry in the history of American literature. His success and friendship with Monroe also brought him into the
Chicago Group and contact with such poets as
Carl Sandburg and
Vachel Lindsay.
Masters was never to equal the success of Spoon River Anthology. He published thirty-nine more books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and biographies of Lindsay, Mark Twain, Whitman, and Lincoln. In 1917, Masters left his family; he and his wife would divorce in 1923. In 1920 Masters gave up his law firm and moved from Chicago to
New York City, where he retired to the
Chelsea Hotel to write. In 1926 he married
Ellen Coyne, thirty years his junior. In his later years, Masters received several awards based on his earlier successes, including a
Poetry Society of America Award, the
Shelley Memorial Award, and a grant from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died March 5, 1953, in a convalescent home in
Philadelphia and was buried in
Petersburg, Illinois.
Source: The American Academy of Poets.
Collection information
To be used only with permission of the donor.
Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. Researchers should note that compliance with copyright law is their responsibility. Researchers must determine the owners of the literary rights and obtain any necessary permissions from them.
The collection is divided into six sections:
- Series 1. Letters
- Series 2. Poetry
- Series 3. Prose
- Series 4. Drawings
- Series 5. Clippings
- Series 6. Letters to Hilary Masters from H. L. Mencken
Items within Series 1 (Letters) are ordered chronologically. Items within Series 2, 3, 4, and 5 (Poetry, Prose, Drawings, and Clippings) are ordered alphabetically. Items within Series 6 (Letters to Hilary Masters from H. L. Mencken) are ordered chronologically.
Edgar Lee Masters Papers, Ms. Masters, Brown University Library.
The Masters papers consist of approximately 300 letters, manuscripts, and sketches for the period 1928-1946. Chiefly letters to his son, Hilary T. Masters; the collection also includes manuscript poems, short stories, sketches, and two letters from
H. L. Mencken to Hilary Masters.
Additional information
Related material is held by Brown University Library in the following collection and is retrievable by the accession/collection numbers listed:
- S. Foster Damon Letters, 1929-1937, Ms. 16.38
The following organizations also have Edgar Lee Masters papers:
Valentine-Masters Mss., The Lilly Library, Indiana University
Edgar Lee Masters Collection, Special Collections & Archives, Knox College
Papers of Edgar Lee Masters, 1926-1941, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Edgar Lee Masters collection of papers, 1919-1949, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library
Masters-Davis collection, 1928, 1930-1977, bulk (1936-1944), Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library
Literary boss of the middle west: signed typescript and page proofs from AMERICAN MERCURY and Autograph Letter Signed, July 23, 1933), Special Collections Department, Northwestern University
Gertrude Claytor Collection of Edgar Lee Masters, 1915-1961, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University