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Edgar Lee Masters

August 23, 1868 – March 5, 1950

Inducted in 2014

Poetry

A Book of Verses (1898)

Songs and Sonnets (1910)

Spoon River Anthology (1915)

Songs and Satires (1916)

Fiddler Jones (1916)

The Great Valley (1916)

Toward the Gulf (1918)

Starved Rock (1919)

Jack Kelso: A Dramatic Poem (1920)

Domesday Book (1920)

The Open Sea (1921)

The New Spoon River (1924)

Selected Poems (1925)

Lichee-Nut Poems (1925)

Lee: A Dramatic Poem (1926)

Godbey: A Dramatic Poem (1931)

The Serpent in the Wilderness (1933)

Richmond: A Dramatic Poem (1934)

Invisible Landscapes (1935)

Poems of People (1936)

The Golden Fleece of California (1936)

The New World (1937)

More People (1939)

Illinois Poems (1941)

Along the Illinois (1942)

Silence (1946)

George Gray

Many Soldiers

The Unknown

Biographies

Children of the Market Place: A Fictitious Autobiography (1922). Life of Stephen Douglas.

Levy Mayer and the New Industrial Era (1927) Chicago attorney Levy Mayer (1858-1922).

Lincoln: The Man (1931)

Vachel Lindsay: A Poet in America (1935)

Across Spoon River: An Autobiography (memoir) (1936)

Whitman (1937)

Mark Twain: A Portrait (1938)

Books

The New Star Chamber and Other Essays (1904)

The Blood of the Prophets (play) (1905)

Althea (play) (1907)

The Trifler (play) (1908)

Mitch Miller (novel) (1920)

Skeeters Kirby (novel) (1923)

The Nuptial Flight (novel) (1923)

Kit O'Brien (novel) (1927)

The Fate of the Jury: An Epilogue to Domesday Book (1929)

Gettysburg, Manila, Acoma: Three Plays (1930)

The Tale of Chicago (1933)

The Tide of Time (novel) (1937)

The Sangamon (1988)

Immortality is not a gift; Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.

Masters grew up in the western Illinois farmlands and made his reputation with his Spoon River Anthology, one of the most widely read books in American literature. The poems in Spoon River are in the form of a series of graveside monologues, during the course of which Masters captures the voice of the Midwestern people, their values and their struggles that he knew so well. Masters set other poetry in the Illinois prairies, and also created a series of courtroom poems that drew upon his law career. In all, he produced 21 books of poetry, 12 plays, six novels, and six biographies, including those of Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.

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