Edwin Markham
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- For other uses, see E. A. Markham and Edwin Markham (Lieutenant Governor of Jersey)
Charles Edwin Anson Markham (April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940) was an American poet.
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[edit] Life
Edwin Markham was born in Oregon City, Oregon and was the youngest of 6 children; his parents divorced shortly after his birth. At the age of four, he moved to Lagoon Valley, an area northeast of San Francisco; there, he lived with his sister and mother. He worked on the family’s farm beginning at twelve. He went by "Charles" until circa 1895, when he preferred "Edwin". He attended an early college in Vacaville, California, where he studied his favorite realm of learning, literature. His mother, however, was opposed to his higher education (at the time, children rarely could afford to leave the farm). In Vacaville, Charles was able to earn enough money to continue his education in Santa Rosa. Markham completed his classical courses in 1873.
By 1898, Edwin married Anna Catherine Murphy; she was his third wife. 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. All of these books were bequeathed to Wagner College's Horrmann Library, located on Staten Island. Markham also willed his personal papers to the library. Edwin's correspondents included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, Carl Sandburg and Amy Lowell.
[edit] Career
Markham taught literature in El Dorado County until 1879, when he became education superintendent of the county. While residing in El Dorado County, Markham became a member of Placerville Masonic Lodge. Charles also accepted a job as principal of Tompkins Observation School in Oakland, California in 1890. 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. He read The Man With the Hoe, which accented laborers' hardships. 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. In New York, he gave many lectures to labor and radical groups. These happened as often as his poetry readings.
As recounted by literary biographer William R. Nash, [1] "'['b]etween publications, Markham lectured and wrote in other genres, including essays and nonfiction prose. He also gave much of his time to organizations such as the Poetry Society of America, which he established in 1910. Throughout Markham's later life, many readers viewed him as an important voice in American poetry, a position signified by honors such as his election in 1908 to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Despite his numerous accolades, however, none of his later books achieved the success of the first two.
"The change in Markham’s literary significance has been tied to the development of modernist poetry and his steadfast refusal to change to meet the increasing demands arising with the appearance of poets such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams. Their emphasis on changes in literary forms and their movement away from social commentary and political topics made much of what distinguished Markham's verse dated. He gradually fell from critical favor, and his reputation never fully recovered.
"Nevertheless, despite the critics' increasing disenchantment with him, Markham remained an important public figure, traveling across the nation and receiving warm praise nearly everywhere he went. At his home on Staten Island, his birthday was a local school holiday, and children marked the event by covering his lawn with flowers. The crowning glory came on Markham’s eightieth birthday, when a number of prominent citizens, including President Herbert Hoover, honored his accomplishments at a party in Carnegie Hall and named him one of the most important artists of his age. In 1936 Markham suffered a debilitating stroke from which he never fully recovered; he died at his home on Staten Island, New York.
"In his day Markham managed to fuse art and social commentary in a manner that guaranteed him a place among the most famous artists of the late nineteenth century. His reputation has faded because of the somewhat dated nature of his verse; nevertheless, he remains a notable figure for his contributions to American poetry. His work stands as an example of what American critics and readers valued near the turn of the century. His poetry offers insight into an important phase in the development of American letters."
[edit] 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
