The Women of Spoon River

Published in 1915, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology is a collection of epitaph poems describing the lives of the inhabitants of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran – and still runs near Masters’ home town in Illinois. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters providing accounts of their lives, losses and deaths. The poems were originally published in the magazine Reedy’s Mirror.