Biography

Edwin Markham was born on April 23, 1852 in Oregon City, Oregon, USA. He was a writer, known for Lincoln, the Man of the People (1923) and Love's Redemption (1921). He was married to Anna Catherine Murphy. He died on March 7, 1940 in New York City, New York, USA.

American Poet who often said that he wished he could write five or six stanzas that would disperse the armies of the world.

His funeral was held in Los Angles and attended by the author Ralph Waldo Trine and Bailey Millard, the San Francisco newspaper editor who, in 1899, first published Markham's poem "The Man With the Hoe".

"The Man With the Hoe" was inspired by the Jean Francois Millett painting by the same name and was not published until thirteen years after it was penned.

As a young man Markham worked as a cowboy before becoming a school teacher. His parents, Samuel and Elizabeth Winchell Markham, who came from Michigan, settled in Oregon around 1847 after crossing the plains in a covered wagon.

[on dreams] 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 at the end, 'The dream is true!'