Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. His parents had emigrated to America from Sweden. The Sandburgs were very poor; Carl left school at the age of thirteen to work odd jobs, from laying bricks to dishwashing, in order to support his family.

Sandburg worked his way through school, where he attracted the attention of a professor, who not only encouraged Sandburg's writing, but paid for the publication of his first volume of poetry.

After college, Sandburg moved to Milwaukee, where he worked as an advertising writer and a newspaper reporter. There he met and married Lillian Steichen, sister of the photographer Edward Steichen. The Sandburgs soon moved to Chicago, where Carl became an editorial writer for the Chicago Daily News.

He established his reputation as a poet with Chicago Poems (1916), and then Cornhuskers (1918). In the twenties, he started some of his most ambitious projects, including his study of Abraham Lincoln.

In 1928 the Sandburgs moved to Harbert, Michigan, and in 1943, seeking a mild climate, the family moved again, this time to Connemara, a farm in Flat Rock, North Carolina, where Sandburg lived the rest of his life, He worked as a farmer and writer, raising goats and singing folksongs.

Carl Sandburg died on July 22, 1967.