(Charles Edward Anson) Edwin Markham - Life, Career, Bibliography

Poet and editor, born in Oregon City, Oregon, USA. He studied briefly at Christian College, Santa Rosa, CA, then taught in California (1875–1901). After the sudden success of ‘The Man with the Hoe’ (1899), a poem inspired by Jean-Francois Millet's painting, and ‘Lincoln, the Man of the People’ (1901), he moved to Staten Island, New York, and spent the rest of his life writing and lecturing, but never again attaining the recognition he gained from these two poems.

Charles Edwin Anson Markham (April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940) was an American poet.

Life

Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon and was the youngest of 6 children; He went by "Charles" until circa 1895, when he preferred "Edwin".

By 1898, Edwin married Anna Catherine Murphy; They moved to New York City in 1901, where they lived in Brooklyn and then Staten Island. Edwin Markham had, by the time of his death, amassed a huge personal library of 15 000+ volumes. Markham also willed his personal papers to the library. Edwin's correspondents included Franklin D.

Career

Markham taught literature in El Dorado County until 1879, when he became education superintendent of the county. While in Oakland, he became well acquainted with many other famous contemporary writers and poets, such as Joaquin Miller, Donna Coolbrith, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Edmund Clarence Stedman.

Edwin's first public poetry reading was at a New Year's Eve party in 1898. His main inspiration was a French painting of the same name (in French, L'homme à la houe) by Jean-François Millet. Markham's poem was published, and it became quite popular very soon.

Bibliography

Poetry

The Man With the Hoe and Other Poems - (1899) Lincoln and Other Poems - (1901) Gates of Paradise - (1920) Eighty Poems at Eighty - (1932) The Ballad of the Gallows Bird - (published 1960)

Prose

Children in Bondage (1914)