Masters, Edgar Lee

A series of poetic monologues by 244 former inhabitants (both real and imagined) of Spoon River, an area near Lewiston and Petersburg, Illinois. All in the cast are dead, and from their graves they speak their own epitaphs, discovering and confessing the real motivations of their lives.

The dead arise from their sleep in the cemetery of a small town to tell their individual stories about an entire community caught in a web of scandal, sin, and vice in the early twentieth century.

Some of the deceased villagers from Spoon River talk about their former lives in the village.

This collection of poems about members of a small early twentieth century town who rise from their graves to tell their individual stories also includes background information on the real town and the actual people who lived there.

A series of dramatic monologues, in which inhabitants of the cemetery on the hill overlooking the fictional midwestern town of Spoon River reveal the shocking scandals and tragic secrets of their lives.