Edwin Markham

Edwin Markham 1852-1940, American poet, b. Oregon City, Oreg. He grew up in California and later taught school there. In 1899 he achieved widespread popularity for the poem "The Man with the Hoe." Inspired by Millet's famous painting, the poem was a protest against the degradation and exploitation of labor. His other famous poem, "Lincoln, the Man of the People," appeared in Lincoln and Other Poems (1901).

Bibliography: See biography by L. Filler (1966).

Markham, Edwin [Charles] (1852–1940),Oregon‐born poet, lived in California (1857–1901), where he became a schoolteacher. He won widespread popularity for the title poem of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899), inspired by Millet's painting. This blank‐verse depiction of a brutalized farmer, “bowed by the weight of centuries …The emptiness of ages in his face,” is a somewhat rhetorical protest against the degradation of exploited labor. Lincoln and Other Poems (1901), in the same vein, was also very popular. His many later volumes are generally mediocre, marked by a lofty and occasionally tumid melody. The character Presley in Norris's The Octopus is said to represent Markham.