Spoon River Anthology - Edgar Lee Masters

. .

Résumé :
Spoon River Anthology is a collection of short poems that reveals the true nature of the citizens of a fictional small town in Illinois. Each poem is a candid autobiography of a now-deceased resident that lies in the Oak Hill Cemetery?often exposing their darkest secrets. Edgar Lee Masters was raised in Lewistown, Illinois and based these stories on the gossip he heard there. The book was a commercial success, but was banned from schools and libraries in the area due to the real-life citizens knowing exactly whom each poem was written about. As the years have passed and more generations now lie in Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown has forgiven Masters, and he?s now celebrated there. The poems were originally published in the literary magazine Reedy?s Mirror under the pseudonym Webster Ford. The first book edition was published in 1915 and contained 209 poems. Masters added 35 new poems, including the epilogue, for the 1916 edition, which is the edition that this Standard Ebooks edition is based on.

Biographie:
Edgar Lee Masters (August 23, 1868 - March 5, 1950) was an American attorney, poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness, An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman....