bard professor Phillip Green Wright, a talented scholar and politicalliberal, encouraged the talented young Sandburg. Sandburg honed his writing skillsand adopted the socialist views of his mentor before leaving school in his senioryear. Sandburg sold stereoscope views and wrote poetry for two years before hisfirst book of verse, In Reckless Ecstasy, was printed on Wright's basement press in1904. Wright printed two more volumes for Sandburg, Incidentals and The Plaintof a Rose.As the first decade of the century wore on, Sandburg grew increasinglyconcerned with the plight of the American worker. In 1907 he worked as anorganizer for the Wisconsin Social Democratic party, writing and distributingpolitical pamphlets and literature. At party headquarters in Milwaukee, Sandburgmet Lilian Steichen, whom he married in 1908. The responsibilities of marriageand family prompted a career change. Sandburg returned to Illinois and took upjournalism. For several years he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News,covering mostly labor issues and later writing his own feature.Sandburg was virtually unknown to the literary world when, in 1914, agroup of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine. Twoyears later his book Chicago Poems was published, and the thirty-eight-year-oldauthor found himself on the brink of a career that would bring him internationalacclaim. Sandburg published another volume of poems, Cornhuskers, in 1918, andwrote a searching analysis of the 1919 Chicago race riots. More poetry followed,along with Rootabaga Stories, a book of fanciful children's tales. That bookprompted Sandburg's publisher, Alfred Harcourt, to suggest a biography ofAbraham Lincoln for children. Sandburg researched and wrote for three years,producing not a children's book, but a two-volume biography for adults. HisAbraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, published in 1926, was Sandburg's firstfinancial success. He moved to a new home on the ...
