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Edgar Lee Masters was born on August 23, 1868 to Emma J. Dexter and Hardin Wallace Masters in Garnett, Kansas, where his father had briefly moved to set up a law practice.  The family soon moved back to his paternal grandparents' farm near Petersburg in Menard County, Illinois. About 1880 they moved to Lewistown, Illinois, when Edgar Lee was eleven and purchased this house in 1883.  (The house is today a private residence. Note the original Masters footstone to the right of the front door.)  Edgar Lee graduated from Lewistown High School in 1886.  He participated locally in debating, oratory and theatre; worked in a news office; and studied law with his father.

The culture around Lewistown, in addition to the town's cemetery at Oak Hill, and the nearby Spoon River were the inspirations for many of his works.  Masters drew on the values and frustrations of his youth in Lewistown.  and each of the epitaphs in the form of monologues
are spoken from the grave by the former inhabitants of a fictitious small town, who tell of their bitter, unfulfilled lives in its dreary confines
.revealing the secret lives of dead citizens.  These people contemplate the meaning of their lives by recalling their contributions and personal or family histories.

Spoon River Anthology (1915), was his most famous and acclaimed work.  Spoon River was Masters's revenge on small-town hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness.  It gained a huge popularity,but shattered his position as a respectable member of establishment. 

While living in Lewistown Edgar, worked in a printer's office, and reported for local newspapers, and read law in his father's office.  He was admitted to the bar in 1891.  Edgar, left Lewistown for Chicago in the early 1890's, and became a law partner of criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow.  Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Rachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.

A 6 cent U. S. Postage Stamp featuring Edgar Lee Masters image was issued on August 22, 1970 to pay him tribute.  It was among the American Poet Stamps series.