Spoon River Anthology - (Penguin Classics) by Edgar Lee Masters (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in the United States of America by The Macmillan Company 1915."

Book Synopsis

The innovative free verse collection of small-town life that made Edgar Lee Masters a legend

A literary sensation when it appeared in 1915, Spoon River Anthology earned Edgar Lee Masters comparisons to T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. The characters who speak here tarnish the pure image of their Midwestern hamlet by holding forth from the grave with tales of illicit love affairs, betrayed confidences, political corruption, and miserable marriages. The first serious work of psychological naturalism, this artful indictment of small-town hypocrisy influenced Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, and other luminaries.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the Author

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868 in Garnett, Kansas, and was raised in several small towns in Illinois. He long harbored literary ambitions but was trained as a lawyer, and practiced for several years in Chicago with Clarence Darrow. Using a variety of pseudonyms to avoid possible damage to his law practice, Masters began to publish poetry in magazines. By 1915 he had published four books of poetry, seven plays, and a collection of essays, but none of them had received much critical attention. Masters then began to experiment with poetic form, bringing to life the sort of people he had known in his Midwestern childhood. The result was Spoon River Anthology, which mixed classical and innovative forms to create a work that critics both praised and scorned for its forthrightness and originality. The book experienced great critical and popular success, and influenced a generation of writers. Although Masters published a sequel to the book and many more works, he never succeeded in producing another volume to match his masterpiece. He died in 1950.