A Study Guide for Edgar Lee Masters's "Lucinda Matlock"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Edgar Lee Masters's "Lucinda Matlock," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535827812

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11

Lucinda Matlock

Edgar Lee Masters

1915

Introduction

Lucinda Matlock is one of the most famous poems written by Edgar Lee Masters. Based on the poet's grandmother, it is written in the voice of a woman who, having lived to the age of ninetysix, addresses readers from beyond the grave about the pain and beauty in her life in the rural American heartland. Having outlived eight of the twelve children born to her, readers might expect Lucinda to wallow in the difficulty of the homesteader life she led, but she ends the poem admonishing those who let their sorrows get the best of them.

This poem comes from Spoon River Anthology, which many critics consider one of the greatest poetry collections in American literature. Published in 1915, the book presents a series of monologues representing 214 residents who lived and died in the mythical Spoon River, Illinois, a small prairie town. For inspiration, Masters read the tombstones in the small towns that he grew up in, near the banks of the actual river that inspired his book's title. Spoon River Anthology made Masters, who was a practicing lawyer at the time, a literary sensation and a household name. Unfortunately, he was never able to replicate the book's success. The other biographies, plays, and poetry collections he wrote, including a 1924 sequel called The New Spoon River, never gained him the critical or popular acclaim he received for Spoon River Anthology, which remained his life's great literary achievement. Spoon River Anthology, including Lucinda Matlock, is still in print in several editions, including a Penguin Classics edition published in 2008.

Author Biography

Masters was born in Garnett, Kansas, on August 23, 1868, where his parents lived for just a little over a year. His father, Hardin Wallace Masters, was a lawyer, which is the occupation that Masters