Sandburg left school when he was thirteen and worked at a variety of jobs in the Mid-Western states. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, he enlisted in the 6th Infantry, but saw no combat. He returned to Galesburg and studied classics at Lombard College. He moved to Wisconsin in 1902, before attaining his degree, and got involved in the Socialist movement that was taking shape at the time. In 1904, he published his first book of poetry, In Reckless Ecstasy. He married Lillian Steichen in 1908, a fellow socialist. From 1910 to 1912 he worked as a secretary to the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee. He moved to Chicago in 1913 and worked as an editor while contributing articles to the International Socialist Review. His first major collection of poems, Chicago Poems appeared in 1916. He served as a foreign correspondent during the First World War and published his war experiences in Cornhuskers in 1918. From 1919 to 1932 he was on the staff of the Chicago Daily News. During the 1920's and 1930's, Sandburg's following increased, taken by his free verse and use of everyday language. He collected songs that he had heard from a variety of sources and published The American Songbag in 1927. In 1926, he began perhaps his greatest work, the life of Lincoln which eventually stretched to six volumes and won him the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1940. Sandburg wrote only one novel, Remembrance Rock (1948), an epic saga of America. Like many socialist-leaning writers and poets of the time including Ezra Pound and Theodore Dreiser, Sandburg was always closely watched by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. In 1943, he moved to North Carolina where he remained for the rest of his life. His other works include The Chicago Race Riots (1919), Rootabaga Stories (1920), Good Morning, America (1928), Early Moon (1930), The People, Yes (1936), Storm Over the Land (1942), Always the Young Strangers (1943), Harvest Poems (1960) and Honey and Salt (1963). |
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