Edgar Lee Masters was born August 23, 1868, in Garnett, Kansas, and spent his youth in Shipley Hill, Petersburg, and Lewistown, Illinois. Masters in 1915-16 depicted the latter two communities in his Spoon River Anthology. Educated at Knox College in 1889-90, Masters went on to study the law and was admitted to the bar in 1891. He practised law and from 1903 to 1911 was partner with Clarence Darrow in Chicago. After his great success with the Spoon River Anthology and winning Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize in 1916, Masters took up writing novels, biographies, and poetry full-time, but his later work was less successful with readers. In 1942, however, Masters won both the Award in Literature from American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the medal of the Poetry Society of America. Two years later he merited the Shelley Memorial Award, and in 1946 a fellowship from the American Academy of Poets. He died March 5, 1950, in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania. He had three children by his first wife, Helen Jenkins (married 1898, divorced 1923), and one child by his second wife, Ellen F. Coyne, an English teacher. Masters is buried in Petersburg, Illinois.

• Masters, Edgar Lee. A Book of Verses. Chicago: Way and Williams, 1898. PS 3525 .A83B65 1970 Robarts Library
• --. The Blood of the Prophets. Rooks, 1905.
• -- [Webster Ford]. Songs and Sonnets Chicago: Rooks, 1910.
• --. Songs and Sonnets: Second Series. Chicago: Rooks, 1912.
• --. The Spoon River Anthology. Macmillan, 1915. B-11/0660 Fisher Rare Book Library. Enlarged edition, 1916. New edition, 1944. PS 3525 .A83S5 1916 St. Michael's College. PS 3525 .A83S5 Robarts Library
• --. Spoon River Anthology: An Annotated Edition. Ed. John E. Hallwas. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
• --. Songs and Satires. New York: Macmillan, 1916. PS 3525 .A83S45 Robarts Library
• --. The Great Valley. New York: Macmillan, 1916. PS 3525 .A83G7 Robarts Library
• --. Toward the Gulf. New York: Macmillan, 1918. PS 3525 .A83T6 Robarts Library
• --. Starved Rock. New York: Macmillan, 1919. PS 3525 .A83S7 Robarts Library
• --. Domesday Book. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1921. PS 3525 .A83D6 Robarts Library
• --. The New Spoon River. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924. PS 3525 .A83S52 1924 Robarts Library
• --. Selected Poems. New York: Macmillan, 1925. PS 3525 .A83A6 Robarts Library
• --. Lee: a Dramatic Poem. New York: Macmillan, 1926. PS 3525 .A83L4 Robarts Library
• --. Parrot Pie: Parodies and Imitations of Contemporaries. London, 1927.
• --. Jack Kelso: a Dramatic Poem. New York: Appleton, 1928. PS 3525 .A83J3 Robarts Library
• --. The Fate of the Jury: An Epilogue to Domesday Book. New York: Appleton, 1929. PS 3525 .A83F3 Robarts Library
• --. Lichee Nuts. New York: H. Liveright, 1930. PS 6525 .A83L5 Robarts Library
• --. Godbey: a Dramatic Poem. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1931. PS 3525 .A83G6 1931 Robarts Library
• --. Richmond: a Dramatic Poem. New York: Samuel French, 1934.
• --. The Serpent in the Wilderness. Sheldon Dick, 1933.
• --. Invisible Landscapes. New York: Macmillan, 1935. PS 3525 .A83I6 Robarts Library
• --. Across Spoon River: an Autobiography. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936. PS 3525 .A83Z52 1969
• --. Poems of People. New York: Appleton-Century, 1936. PS 3525 .A83P6 Robarts Library
• --. The Golden Fleece of California. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936. PS 3525 .A83G65 Robarts Library
• --. The New World. New York: Appleton-Century, 1937. PS 3525 .A83N48 Robarts Library
• --. More People. New York: Appleton-Century, 1939. PS 3525 .A83M6 Robarts Library
• --. Illinois Poems. Prairie City, Ill.: James A. Decker, 1941.
• --. Poems. Ed. Denys Thompson. London, 1972.
• --. The Western Illinois Poets: the Early Poetry of Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg. Ed. John E. Hallwas. Macomb, Ill., 1975.
• --. The Harmony of Deeper Music: Posthumous Poems of Edgar Lee Masters. Ed. Frank K. Robinson. Austin, 1976. PS 3525 .A83H3 1976 Robarts Library
• --. The Enduring River: Edgar Lee Masters' Uncollected Spoon River Poems. Ed. Herbert K. Russell. Carbondale, 1991. PS 3525 .A83A17 1991 Robarts Library
• Russell, Herbert K. Edgar Lee Masters: A Biography. Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2001. PS 3525 .A83Z86 Robarts Library