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 Aug. 23, 1869, in Garnett, Kansas. A year later his father's law practice failed and the family moved to the grandfather's Illinois farm. Edgar's father won appointment as state's attorney in Petersburg, and there the young boy started school. In 1880 the family moved to Lewistown near the Spoon River. Masters continued his schooling, worked in a printer's office, and reported for local newspapers. He read James Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Burns, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote poetry, and read law in his father's office. In 1889 he entered Knox College, but his father refused help, so he returned to law in Lewistown. Admitted to the bar in 1891, in 1892 he left for Chicago.

Masters entered a law partnership in...