Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

Two hundred and twelve residents of a small town tell their stories without fear of recrimination or ridicule. The only difference is that they're all dead! The two hundred and forty-four poems that form the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters is really a series of epitaphs about the citizens of a fictional town called Spoon River and deals with the “plain and simple annals” of small town America. Edgar Lee Masters grew up in a small town in Illinois. His father's financial problems forced the young Masters to abandon ideas of college and take up a job instead. Though he continued to study privately, he was compelled to work on a series of dull and uninspiring jobs. Finally, he completed his education in law and set up a law practice in Chicago. His firm did extremely well. For nearly a decade, one of his partners was the legendary lawyer, Clarence Darrow. However, Masters secretly nursed literary ambitions and his first book of verse and several essays were published under t...