Carl Sandburg

January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967

Inducted in 2011

Works

In Reckless Ecstasy (1904)

Incidentals (1904)

Plaint of a Rose (1908)

Joseffy (1910)

You and Your Job (1910)

Chicago Poems (1916)

Cornhuskers (1918)

Chicago Race Riots (1919)

Clarence Darrow of Chicago (1919)

Smoke and Steel (1920)

Rootabaga Stories (1922)

Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)

Rootabaga Pigeons (1923)

Selected Poems (1926)

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926)

The American Songbag (1927)

Songs of America (1927) (collected by Sandburg; edited by Alfred V. Frankenstein)

Abe Lincoln Grows Up (1928)

Good Morning, America (1928)

Steichen the Photographer (1929)

Early Moon (1930)

Potato Face (1930)

Mary Lincoln: Wife and Widow (1932)

The People, Yes (1936)

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)

Storm over the Land (1942)

Road to Victory (1942) (exhibition catalog)

Home Front Memo (1943)

Remembrance Rock (1948)

Lincoln Collector: the story of the Oliver R. Barrett Lincoln collection (1949)

The New American Songbag (1950)

Complete Poems (1950)

The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and the Broom Handle and Who Was In It (1950)

Always the Young Strangers (1953) (autobiography)

Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg (1954) (edited by Rebecca West)

The Family of Man (1955) (exhibition catalog)

Prairie-Town Boy (1955) (autobiography)

Sandburg Range (1957)

Harvest Poems, 1910–1960 (1960)

Wind Song (1960)

The World of Carl Sandburg (1960) (stage production)

Carl Sandburg at Gettysburg (1961) (documentary)

Honey and Salt (1963)

The Letters of Carl Sandburg (1968) (autobiographical/correspondence) (edited by Herbert Mitgang)

Breathing Tokens (poetry by Sandburg, edited by Margaret Sandburg) (1978)

Ever the Winds of Chance (1983) (autobiography) (started by Sandburg, completed by Margaret Sandburg and George Hendrick)

Carl Sandburg at the Movies: a poet in the silent era, 1920–1927 (1985) (selections of his reviews of silent movies)

Billy Sunday and other poems (1993)

Poems for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote (1999)

Poems for the People. (1999)

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (2007)

*Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.*

A winner of Pulitzer Prizes for both poetry and biography, as well as a Grammy for spoken word performance, Sandburg provided Chicago with its lasting reputation as “Hog Butcher to the World,” as well as “City of Big Shoulders.” Sandburg’s roots were in rural Galesburg, Illinois (where he for a time drove a milk wagon), but his prolific output reflects his deep connection to Chicago, where he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He lived in Elmhurst for 13 years. In addition to his poetry, criticism and biographical work, Sandburg wrote acclaimed film reviews and children’s stories. Sandburg’s vast legacy includes train lines, auditoriums, postal stamps, urban renewal projects, grade schools, middle schools and colleges bearing his name.