In 1915, Edgar Lee Masters published a book of dramatic monologues written in free verse about a fictional town called Spoon River. Based on the midwestern towns where Edgar Lee Masters grew up, the shocking scandals and secret tragedies of Spoon River were immediately recognized by readers as authentic. Masters raises the dead "sleeping on the hill" in the village cemetery to tell the truth about their lives, and their testimony topples the American myth of the moral superiority of small-town life. Spoon River is as undeniably corrupt and truel as the big city, and is home to murderers, drunkards, crooked bankers, lechers, bitter wives and abusive husbands, failed dreamers, and a few good souls. The freshness of this landmark work has not diminished, and Spoon River Anthology remains an American classic.

A notorious success when it was first published in 1915, this collection of dramatic monologues by over 200 former inhabitants of the fictional town of Spoon River topples the myth of moral superiority in small-town America, as the dead give testimony to their shocking scandals and secret tragedies.