Masters Biographer

For the second year a Dartmouth man has been awarded a Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Trust Fellowship, established to assist writers at work on manuscripts deserving of publication. Kimball Flaccus '33, who is writing a biography of the poet Edgar Lee Masters, was recently granted the 34th such fellowship offered by Harper & Brothers. Last year one was awarded to Evan S. Connell Jr. '45 to complete a novel.

Kimball Flaccus, the author of two volumes of poetry, was introduced to Edgar Lee Masters in 1940 by a mutual friend. Flaccus and Masters saw each other frequently and, becoming a great admirer of the author of the SpoonRiver Anthology, as a man as well as a writer, Flaccus asked to become his biographer. This was agreed to and a series of interviews took place. Masters furnished private papers and also much supplementary information about his life and writings. The two men also corresponded frequently. The project had to be given up during the war when Flaccus joined the Service in 1942. The biography was not resumed until after Masters' death, when approval to continue was obtained from Mrs. Ellen Coyne Masters, literary executor of the estate.

Avalanche of April, a book of poems published in 1934, and The WhiteStranger, published in 1940, won Flaccus wide acclaim from critics. He has been vice president of the Poetry Society of America, and in 1952 was awarded the Newberry Library Fellowship in Mid-Western Studies.