About
Carl Sandburg, born in Galesburg, Illinois, to Swedish parents, left school at 13 to work. After serving in the Spanish-American War, he attended Lombard College. A journalist in Chicago, he published his first poems in Poetry in 1914. His collection Chicago Poems (1916) made him famous. He wrote a monumental biography of Abraham Lincoln, winning the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1940 and for Poetry in 1951. He also published children's books, folk songs, and an autobiography. He spent his later years on a farm in North Carolina, where he died in 1967.
* 1878-01-06 — † 1967-07-22
Major works
- Chicago Poems (1916)poetry collection
- Cornhuskers (1918)poetry collection
- Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926)biography
- Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (1939)biography
- Complete Poems (1950)poetry collection
Key milestones
- 1914Harriet Monroe published six of his poems in Poetry and awarded him the inaugural Levinson Prize for 'Chicago'.
- 1940Won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.
- 1951Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Complete Poems.
Themes
The city of ChicagoThe American peopleNature and rural lifeAbraham LincolnThe working class
Sources: poetryfoundation.org · nps.gov