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7 unusual facts about Edgar Lee Masters


Carl Esser

In the late 60s, he formed a band, A More Perfect Union, and developed a multimedia, rock theater adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Gertrude Harris Boatwright Claytor

A close friend of Edgar Lee Masters, author of Spoon River Anthology (1915), Claytor presented her collection of signed first editions, letters, manuscript poems, and other materials that Masters had given her to Princeton University.

Northern Spy

A Northern Spy apple tree figures in the poem "Conrad Siever" in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

Robert Ingersoll Birthplace

In 1921 a large committee including Thomas Edison, Luther Burbank, Edgar Lee Masters, and members of the Ingersoll family opened the birthplace as a museum, community house, and public library.

Sheldon Dick

He published a book by poet Edgar Lee Masters, and made a documentary about mining that has been of interest to scholars.

The Missouri Harmony

On a visit home in 1914, poet Edgar Lee Masters heard the same tune played by a local fiddler whose father had been a close friend of Lincoln’s in his New Salem days.

William Marion Reedy

William Marion Reedy (1862–1920) was a St. Louis-based editor best known for his promotion of the poets Sara Teasdale, Edgar Lee Masters, and Carl Sandburg to the audience of his newspaper, Reedy's Mirror.


Boardman Robinson

Robinson also illustrated several books, among these are editions of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (1933), Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1941), and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1942).


see also

Society of Midland Authors

Other notable members over the years included Ring Lardner, Edgar Lee Masters, Loredo Taft, Gene Stratton Porter, Jane Addams, Daniel J. Boorstin, August Derleth and Carl Sandburg.