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Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters.
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Biography EssayBeginning in May 1914 Edgar Lee Masters, then an eminently successful Chicago lawyer, published in the St. Louis magazine Reedy's Mirror, under the pseudonym Webster Ford, some two hun...
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Edgar Lee Masters (1869-1950), American author and lawyer, is mainly remembered for his "Spoon River Anthology," a collection of free verse about small-town American life.Edgar Lee Masters was born on...
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Beginning in May 1914 Edgar Lee Masters, then an eminently successful Chicago lawyer, published in the St. Louis magazine Reedy's Mirror, under the pseudonym Webster Ford, some 200 poems about talkati...
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In the following review, Dell finds reasons to respect and admire Spoon River, despite his assertion that Masters's cynical viewpoint limits the philosophical scope of the work.
It is laid up a...
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In the following excerpt, Barnstone examines the misanthropy inherent in Masters's portrait of small-town America.
When Spoon River Anthology first appeared in 1915, it was greeted as a new for...
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In the following essay, Schroth examines Masters's interpretation of nineteenth-century womanhood in Spoon River, finding that the female characters fall into three distinct categories.
Followi...
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In the following essay, Narveson provides an overview of major themes in Spoon River.
The years just before the first world war are relatively barren ones for American literature. Among novelists, Cra...
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In the following essay, Noe analyzes Spoon River in terms of the Johari theory of human communication.
“All my life I have endured loneliness; and now with all these changes come to pass I felt...
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In the following essay, Burgess examines politics in small-town America as a central theme in Spoon River.
On the evening of 19 July 1892, nearing his twenty-fourth birthday, Edgar Lee Masters left Le...
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In the following essay, Chandran argues that Spoon River can be interpreted as a repudiation of the small-town myth.
they made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness. …
Jeremiah 12:10
On its ...
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In the following excerpt, Cassity praises the 1992 edition of Spoon River.
At intervals of about seven years, novelists or dramatists seem compelled to savage Citadel, the Military College of South Ca...
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In the following essay, Hollander presents an overview of the background and major themes of Spoon River, offering praise for the 1992 annotated edition of the collection.
Spoon River Anthology is one...
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In the following excerpt, Lowell provides an analysis of Spoon River and of Masters's career as a Midwestern poet.
Mr. Masters is the author of a number of books, but one has made his fame; and...
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In the following essay, Masters and Yust discuss Masters's poetry.
“My friend,” said Thackeray once, “two different universes walk about under your hat and under mine. ...
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In the following excerpt, Untermeyer comments on Spoon River, suggesting that the poems can be divided into three groups.
Born in the little town of Garnett, Kansas, in 1869, of old Puritan and pionee...
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In the following essay, Masters explains autobiographical and other sources of Spoon River.
I must commence these incunabula of the Spoon River Anthology with some biographical references, since my bl...
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In the following excerpt, Swenson provides a history of the writing and publication of Spoon River.
Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology was the first thing of its kind and a phenomenon in ...
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In the following essay, which was originally read as an introduction to his reading of a selection from Spoon River on the BBC, Thomas notes his interest in American literature and discusses the influ...
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In the following excerpt, Hyman asserts that Masters was “not a great writer, nor even a good one,” but he maintains that in Spoon River Masters “confronted the spiritual poverty ...
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In the following excerpt, Putzel examines Masters's friendship with William Marion Reedy, founder of the St. Louis weekly the Mirror, and Reedy's involvement with the publication of Spoo...
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Teaching Spoon River Anthology
All teaching products sold separately.
Spoon River Anthology Lesson Plans contain 114 pages of teaching material, including:
Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters
Critical Review by Floyd Dell
