Spoon River Anthology is a classic piece of American literature penned by Edgar Lee Masters in 1915. It is regularly taught in American elementary, middle and high schools as part of the standard English literature curriculum in the United States.
It consists of 245 free-verse poems / monologues in which different “ghosts” describe their lives and deaths in a 1st person point of view. Each character has their own unique history, careers, and dramas. Some stories intertwine as characters provide conflicting accounts of the same situations. The work entered the public domain in 2015, and can be read in full online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1280/1280-h/1280-h.htm
Masters based many of these stories and characters on actual people and situations he experienced mostly in his home town of Lewistown, Illinois.
“Masters gleaned tidbits of stories and gossip he heard during the time he spent in Lewistown and nearby Petersburg, where his grandparents lived. In some cases, Masters barely changed their names. Henry Phipps was really banker Henry Phelps. Harry Wilmans was Henry Wilmans. In a few instances, he used real names, such as William H. Herndon, the law partner of Abraham Lincoln, and Anne Rutledge, considered Lincoln’s first love.”
– Laura Wolff Scanlan – HUMANITIES, November/December 2015, Volume 36, Number 6
Beloved for its depiction of small town American life, dramaturgic adaptations of Spoon River Anthology have been performed from Broadway to suburban theaters and school stages for the past 60 years.
Spoon River drives the plot of FORK MOUNTAIN.
THE ANGLO-SAXON GAZE
After the publication of Spoon River Anthology in 1915 and its subsequent popularity, Edgar Lee Masters provided some background on his process in a piece called “Genesis of Spoon River” (https://www.unz.com/print/AmMercury-1933jan-00038/).
In it, Masters describes Spoon River Anthology as a “thoroughly Anglo-Saxon production” which focused primarily on the lives of white Americans and the pursuit of the white American dream.
Masters explores many facets of white America, including gender and class discrimination, but fails to give characters of color the same depth.
Out of 212 characters,
Yee Bow is the only Asian.
Yee Bow
Excerpt from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, 1915
They got me into the Sunday-school
In Spoon River
And tried to get me to drop Confucius for Jesus.
I could have been no worse off
If I had tried to get them to drop Jesus for Confucius.
For, without any warning, as if it were a prank,
And sneaking up behind me, Harry Wiley,
The minister’s son, caved my ribs into my lungs,
With a blow of his fist.
Now I shall never sleep with my ancestors in Pekin,
And no children shall worship at my grave.
