Spoon River Anthology was published by Macmillan in 1915, after initial serial publication in Reedy’s Mirror (a St. Louis literary magazine) in 1914-1915. The book consists of 244 free-verse monologues, each spoken by a former resident of the fictional Spoon River, Illinois, from beyond the grave. The dead speak honestly — freed by death from the need to maintain appearances — and their testimonies reveal the true history of the town: its adulteries, crimes, cruelties, thwarted ambitions, secret loves, economic predations, and occasional moments of genuine grace.
The poems are interconnected: characters reference one another, quarrels continue beyond death, lovers are finally united in honesty, and enemies are forced into the same graveyard. The cumulative effect is of an entire community laid bare — every relationship, every secret, every self-deception exposed. The banker who was a thief, the minister who lost his faith, the wife who loved another man, the poet who was mocked, the radical who was destroyed — all speak their truth at last.
Masters drew on his own experience growing up in Petersburg and Lewiston, Illinois, and many of the characters are recognizable portraits of actual townspeople (a fact that created considerable local controversy). The book’s vision of small-town life as a site of repression, hypocrisy, and wasted potential was revolutionary in 1915 — it preceded Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919) and Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street (1920) in the great revolt against the village.
The collection sold enormously well — over 80,000 copies in its first year, extraordinary for a poetry book — and made Masters famous. Unfortunately, it also defined the limits of his career: nothing he wrote afterward matched its achievement, and he spent the remaining thirty-five years of his life in Spoon River’s shadow.
Collecting Spoon River Anthology
First edition (Macmillan, New York, 1915): Blue cloth binding. First state has “Published April, 1915” on copyright page.
Market values:
- First edition, first state, fine: $500–$1,500
- Very good: $200–$500
- Good: $80–$200
- Signed: $800–$2,000