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Carl Sandburg (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

Charles August Sandburg was born in a modest clapboard cottage on January 6, 1878, in Galesburg, Illinois, to Swedish immigrants August Sandburg and Clara Anderson Sandburg. August worked for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad; Clara Anderson had been a hotel chambermaid before she was married. August Sandburg could read a Swedish Bible, but that was all. He signed his name with an X. Clara Sandburg could write in colloquial Swedish and could phonetically spell English and encouraged her son's learning.

Charles, or Carl, as he was later to call...

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