Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters ( born August 23, 1868 in Garnett, Kansas; † March 5, 1950 in Petersburg, Illinois ) was an American writer, best known as the author of the poetry book Spoon River Anthology.
The son of a lawyer grew up on the farm of his grandparents in St. Petersburg in Menard County, Illinois, on. At age 12, the family moved to Lewistown, Illinois, where he attended high school and published his first article in the Chicago Daily News. The city and its surroundings (the cemetery at Oak Hill, near the Spoon River ) provided inspiration for his later literary works, especially the Spoon River Anthology, published first in 1914 in Reedy 's Mirror in St. Louis, then in 1915 as a book. The poems in the collection are written as obituaries for approximately 200 people from the fictional small town of Spoon River, obituaries, probably added from the dead himself. Most people meet the real templates from Petersburg and Lewistown (for example, Ann Rutledge, which is rumored an early love of Abraham Lincoln was and buried in Petersburg is located ). The book was a great success, but created him active in his native also enemies because he had relentlessly portrayed the bigotry of small-town.
Masters previously published books of poetry ( first 1898) and published more until 1942, but could not build on the success of Spoon River Anthology. He also wrote several plays, novels and biographies of Lincoln, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. In 1936 he wrote the autobiography "Across Spoon River".
Professional Masters worked as a lawyer, first in the office of his father, then in Chicago, where he worked with a partner in 1893 and a law firm, among others 1903 to 1908 was in the office of the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow. From 1911 he had his own law firm.
Masters was in 1898 married to Helen Jenkins, with whom he had three children.
On his grave stone at the Oakland Cemetery in Petersburg are some verses from his " Tomorrow is my birthday" (1918 ):
In 1936 he was awarded the Mark Twain Silver Medal, 1941, the Medal of the Poetry Society of America, 1942, the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the 1944 Shelly Memorial Award.
Aftermath
The Italian composer Mario Pera Gallo wrote to the Spoon River Anthology, the scenic Madrigal La Collina, which premiered in 1947.
The German composer Wolfgang Jacobi set to music in 1956 four poems of the Spoon River Anthology and created the song cycle "The dead of Spoon River" for baritone and accordion.
The Italian Fabrizio de André Cantautore adapted some poems of Spoon River Anthology for his album 'Non al denaro non all'amore nè al cielo ' (1971).
Writings
- Edgar Lee Masters: The dead of Spoon River, DTV 1968, Piper 1987