Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950)
Edgar Lee Masters, born 23 August 1868 in Kansas, grew up in the Western Illinois farmlands, which his grandparents had settled in the 1820s. He was educated in the public schools in Petersburg and Lewistown, Illinois.
From the mid-1870s to 1881, Masters lived with his family in the house that now serves as the Edgar Lee Masters Memorial Museum. Originally located on West Monroe Street, the house was moved to its present location at 8th & Jackson Streets in 1960.
Petersburg and other western Illinois towns provided Masters with the subjects for his 1915 book of free verse poems, SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY. The book became an international best seller, changed the course of American literature, and made him World famous.
Masters practiced law in Chicago from 1892 to 1920, which included eight years in the law firm of the infamous Clarence Darrow. Throughout his life, Masters published 29 books of poetry, nine plays, six biographies, two essays, eight works of fiction, and three works of nonfiction.
Masters was a frequent visitor to Petersburg even after moving to Chicago to pursue careers in law and literature. In1936, he was honored at Petersburg’s centennial and returned mentally many times thereafter, as in this poem:
Petersburg is my heart’s home.
There I knew at first earth’s sun and air;
Still I can see the hills around it,
The people that walked its business square . . .