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Markham, Edwin

Name: Edwin Markham

Nickname/Alias: born: Charles Edward Anson Edwin Markham

Achievements: Poet whose poems on the common man had tremendous impact

Born: April 23, 1852; Oregon City, Oregon

Died: March 7, 1940; New York, NY (Aged 88)

Field & Discipline: Literature; Poet

Father: Samuel Markham

Mother: Elizabeth Winchell

Siblings: John; Warren; William Henry Harrison; Columbia  Louisa

Spouse: 1) Annie Cox; 2) Caroline E. Bailey; 3) Anna Catherine Murphy

Children: Virgil

Education: Christian College, Santa Rosa, California

Major Work:

"The Man with the Hoe"

Life & Times:

By the time he was seven, Markham was herding sheep in California. At 12, he was working as a farmhand.  In his teens, he became a cowboy.  He offered his services to the locals as a teacher and  made enough money to take himself to the Christian College  at Santa Rosa, California, where he finished a classical course in 1873.  He then took a job as a country school teacher.

In 1876, Markham read Thomas Lake Harris's "The Lord: The  Two-in-One; Declared, Manifested and Glorified" and thought it superb.  A poet and mystic,  Harris had been a Universalist, spiritualist and  minister of the Swedenborg church.   He claimed revelations and contacts with spirits.  He shared the aims of the Transcendentalists in wanting to create a Utopian kingdom on earth. 

Markham was impressed by Harris's insistence on relating his beliefs to everyday life.  Markham went to see Harris in his vineyards and was struck by the contrast between the joyful ways of Harris and his followers, and the grim Methodism in which he had been brought up.

In 1879 he was made county superintendent of schools. This freed him from the daily round of teaching and gave him more time for his literary  pursuits.  He built up a library of  some 3,000 books, which included works by Zola, Turgenev and Karl Marx.  In 1884 some of his poems were published in reviews.  They reflected his compassion for the poor and oppressed. 

Markham's name as a radical now was becoming known abroad.  He was published in London by [published by] William Morris* in his review "The Commonweal.”  Markham admired the painting of Frenchman [a fan of] Millet*, who portrayed peasants at work.  In 1886, a friend showed him a woodcut, printed in "Scribner's Magazine,” of Millet's "The Man with a Hoe.”   So taken was he with the woodcut, he clipped the page and put it into a book on Millet. 

In 1890, Markham was made Principal of the Tompkins School in Oakland, California: an institution for the disadvantaged child.

In 1893, he went to the World's Fair in Chicago, where he met writers and editors from New England. He now had a literary reputation on the West Coast and a good job, but he yearned for wider recognition.  He sought backers and publishers in Montreal, New York and Boston, but by 1895, he had made no real headway.

In 1895, he changed his first name to Edwin Markham, (dropping his given name, Charles), after trying out Kenneth Malcolm, George Roy Jones and Kenneth Gray.  He even thought of changing his name to Victor Hugo.  Also in 1895, he suffered a nervous collapse.

He continued to teach and write poems such as "Star Dust,” "The Elf Child" and the "Passion Flower" as well as more socially aware verse such as "a la Reading Gail" (sic), a reference to Oscar Wilde's poem written in Reading Gaol.

In 1896, Markham wrote a poem about Millet's "Man with a Hoe,” which was read aloud at a New Year's Eve party in 1898. The poem was called "The Man with a Hoe" and expressed Markham's views about the common man.

The editor of the "San Francisco Examiner" heard it and published it prominently on January 15, 1899.  It had an enormous impact and Markham became famous.  The poem was translated into 40 languages and earned a large amount of money. [a fan was] William James* said of the poem that it was "magnificent and  impressive in the highest degree." 

For the rest of his life, Markham lectured, made personal appearances, and  continued to ally himself with labor and radical circles. In 1900, he read a poem about Abraham Lincoln for a Lincoln Day dinner.  "Lincoln and Other Poems" was published in 1901 and  was read to 100,000 people and to one of the earliest radio audiences at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922.

Markham wrote articles on child workers in 1906-07 for Cosmopolitan magazine and these were published in 1914 as "Children in Bondage.” In 1924, his poem "Swedenborg" was read at the unveiling of a bust of [a follower of] Swedenborg* in Chicago.

Assessment: Markham would have remained obscure had he not written "The

Man with a Hoe.”  The poem, which spoke for the oppressed and challenged the social order, struck a chord across the whole world.

Oneliner: Edwin Markham, American poet of the common man

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