August 23 Illinois History Minute

It’s August 23rd, and writer Edgar Lee Masters was born on this day in 1868. Masters grew up in central Illinois, inspired his best-known book.

Spoon River Anthology, which features the departed of a small-town cemetery telling their stories in blank verse – which Masters based on the actual stories of people buried in Petersburg and Lewistown, his two childhood home towns.  Spoon River Anthology came in for a lot of home-town criticism during Masters’ lifetime. But today, a monument in the Lewistown cemetery celebrates the link between Masters’ poetry and many of the people buried there.