Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1926 in two volumes. It covers Lincoln’s life from his birth in Kentucky through his years in Illinois — the log cabin, the river journeys, the self-education, the law practice, the marriage to Mary Todd, the political career that led to the presidency — up to his departure from Springfield in February 1861.
Sandburg wrote biography the way he wrote poetry: through accumulation, through the textures of daily life, through the sounds and rhythms of speech. The Prairie Years reads less like conventional historical biography than like an oral history told by a gifted storyteller — anecdotes pile up, folk tales are interpolated, Lincoln’s own jokes and stories are rendered in dialect, and the Illinois landscape is evoked with the same loving precision Sandburg brought to his prairie poems.
The academic historical establishment was skeptical: Sandburg’s footnoting was casual, his sources sometimes unreliable, his characterizations sometimes sentimental. But the public embraced it completely — The Prairie Years was a massive bestseller and established Sandburg (along with his concurrent folk-singing career) as a national figure.
Collecting Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
First edition (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1926): Two volumes, boards with dust jackets. Also issued in a signed limited edition of 260 copies.
Market values:
- Trade first edition, both volumes, fine in jackets: $100–$300
- Limited signed edition: $300–$800