Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain : A Portrait, Lincoln, The Man, Illinois Poems.

Edgar Lee Masters was born in 1868 in Garnett, Kansas, where his father had briefly moved to set up a law practice, but the family soon moved back to his paternal grandparents' farm near Petersburg in Menard County, Illinois. In 1880 they moved to Lewistown, Illinois, where he attended high school and had his first publication in the Chicago Daily News. The culture around Lewistown and the nearby Spoon River was the inspiration for many of his works, most notably Spoon River Anthology.

After working in his father's law office, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and moved to Chicago, where he established his own law office in 1893. From 1903 to 1908 he had a law partnership with Clarence Darrow.