NEW YORK, NY April 22, 2008 —Illinois-born Carl Sandberg was one of eight children in a Swedish immigrant family living in Galesville. Carl worked as a jack-of-all-trades after graduating from eighth grade. He delivered milk, laid bricks and shined shoes before setting out to ride the rails as a hobo in 1897.

Sandberg noticed a wide gap between rich and poor as he traveled the country. It made a strong impression on him and influenced his later work. He also learned many folk songs from the hobo community, which he often performed with his guitar at speaking engagements after he became a well-known author.

In college, Sandberg joined the Poor Writers’ Club, where a professor encouraged his poetry, and where he embraced socialism and became involved in workers’ rights, writing and distributing pamphlets in 1907.

Then as a young married mad with a family, Sandberg filled a variety of writing jobs. He covered labor issues as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News, wrote the children’s book, Rootabaga Stories in 1922 and researched and produced a 2-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. His poetry won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951, for his collection Complete Poems of Carl Sandberg.

Sandberg reads at WNYC studios in 1955

Sandberg's Biography

Rootabaga Stories

Dan Zanes sings folk songs collected by Sandberg for American Songbag

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