Background
Edwin Markham was born as Charles Edward Anson Markham on April 23, 1852, in Oregon City, Oregon, United States. He was the youngest son of Samuel Barzillai Markham and Elizabeth Winchell Markham, a rancher.
1 Washington Sq, San Jose, CA 95192, United States
San Jose State University (San Jose State Normal School at the time) where Edwin Markham studied from 1870 to 1872.
Edwin Markham was born as Charles Edward Anson Markham on April 23, 1852, in Oregon City, Oregon, United States. He was the youngest son of Samuel Barzillai Markham and Elizabeth Winchell Markham, a rancher.
Edwin Markham’s parents divorced soon after his birth. In 1856, Markham’s mother took him and his only sister to a ranch in Lagoon Valley, northeast of San Francisco. While there, Edwin observed and even was exposed to hard labor which later had an influence on his poetry.
Attending rural schools of the farm, Markham developed an interest in literature but his mother didn’t support him in the passion as well as in education.
At the age of fifteen, Markham ran away from home. After that, his mother gave him permission to pursue his higher education, and in 1868, Markham entered California College in Vacaville where he learned literature and obtained a diploma in teaching two years later. Then, he enrolled at San Jose State Normal School from which he graduated in 1872. Then, Edwin Markham spent a year studying classics at Christian College in Santa Rosa.
The start of Edwin Markham‘s career can be counted from the period of teaching literature in El Dorado County. For several years, he served as an educator in the mountains of San Luis Obispo County, then at Christian College in Santa Rosa, and finally at Coloma. Markham became superintendent of schools at Placerville in 1875. In 1884, Markham occupied the post of a school headmaster in Hayward, and three years later, a school principal in Oakland. Markham had begun writing poetry as early as 1872, but he did not sell his first poem until 1880.
For the next nineteen years from the 1870s, he contributed poems to Harper's, Century Magazine, the Overland Monthly, and Scribner’s Magazine, and cultivated friendships with such eminent American literary figures as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Hamlin Garland, and Ambrose Bierce.
During the last week of December 1898, Edwin Markham completed a poem that changed his career overnight. Titled ‘The Man with the Hoe,’ the poem was based on the painting of the same name by the French artist Jean-Francois Millet in 1862. Millet’s painting depicts a stooping peasant with a brutish expression on his face, who in Markham’s poem becomes the embodiment of the suffering of oppressed labor throughout world history. Markham read the poem to an editor of William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner at a New Years’ Eve party, and that newspaper published the work two weeks later.
‘The Man with the Hoe’ attracted wide public notice and was reprinted in newspapers across the United States. Its appeal for better treatment of the working class became the subject of national debate and launched Markham’s career as a poet, transforming him into a national celebrity. The success provided the poet with an opportunity to concentrate on writing and lecturing to labor groups on social, industrial, and poetic issues.
A year after the publication of his first poem, Markham's debut poetry collection, ‘The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems’ saw the print. Although it first was subject to the same controversy as well as the poem, critics generally viewed Markham as a poet of much promise. In 1901, the volume was followed by ‘Lincoln and Other Poems’.
During the subsequent years, Markham issued more poetry collections, including ‘Shoes of Happiness’, ‘Gates of Paradise’ (1920), ‘New Poems: Eighty Songs at Eighty’, and ‘The Star of Araby’. Although, they had no such success as the early works, and the author’s reputation gradually went down with the appearance of new poetic styles. However, he continued to lecture and writing for periodicals as a literary journalist. One of the major events became the invitation from former president William Howard Taft in 1922 when Markham read his ‘Lincoln the Man of the People’ at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.
(The second volume of fourteen about Golden Quest the Age ...)
1909(The last volume of the series edited by Edwin Markham tel...)
1927(The book was written in collaboration with Benjamin B. Li...)
1914(One of the first poetry collection of Edwin Markham)
1899(The book was written in collaboration with Mary E. Burt)
1907(The volume of prose by Edwin Markham)
1914Edwin Markham turned away from the Methodist faith in 1876 and adopted the ideas of the spiritualist and utopian socialist Thomas Lake Harris. Harris’s doctrine which united social harmony and universal charity had an important role in Markham’s life. While living in El Dorado County, Markham joined Placerville Masonic Lodge.
Edwin Markham poetry is characterized by its highly rhetorical nature and expresses his advocacy of social reform as well as his desire for the unity of humankind through spiritual faith.
Quotations:
"Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!"
"Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out. "
"Defeat may serve as well as victory To shake the soul and let the glory out. When the great oak is straining in the wind, The boughs drink in new beauty and the trunk Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. Only the soul that knows the mighty grief Can know the mighty rapture, Sorrows come To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy. "
"At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky And flinging the cloud and the towers by, Is a place of central calm: So here in the roar of mortal things, I have a place where my spirit sings, In the hollow of God's Palm. "
Edwin Markham was elected to National Institute of Arts and Letters (currently American Academy of Arts and Letters) in 1908.
Edwin Markham changed the name he had received at birth, Charles, to Edwin in about 1895.
By the time of his death in 1940, Markham’s collection of books reached 15000 volumes. It was bequeathed to Wagner College's Horrmann Library on Staten Island as well as the poet’s personal correspondence with such prominent figures as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ambrose Bierce, Aleister Crowley, Jackand Charmian, Carl Sandburg, Florence Earle Coates, and Amy Lowell.
Physical Characteristics: Edwin Markham had a distinguished appearance – tall, ruggedly featured, and bearded – which impressed many people as the model of a great American poet.
Quotes from others about the person
"Markham, more than any other poet in the English language, can claim the honor of being the Bard of Labor – the true product of the last great movement that is destined to shake the world." Leonard D. Abbot
"At a time when protest counted, Markham’s first triumph, ‘The Man with the Hoe,’ helped awaken the conscience of the American people." Joseph W. Slade, author
"Edwin Markham's Lincoln ['Lincoln, the Man of the People'] is the greatest poem ever written on the immortal martyr, and the greatest that ever will be written." Dr. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton
Edwin Markham was married three times.
Annie Cox became his first spouse in 1875. They divorced in 1884. Three years later, the poet married for the second time.
In 1897, Markham formed a family with Anna Murphy who gave birth to their son Virgil in a couple of years.