In 1926, Masters remarried Ellen F. Coyne and withdrew from the literary circuit. Throughout the 1930s, Masters' various works — such as Poems of the People (1936); subsequent prose, including biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain; and an autobiography, Across Spoon River (1936) — failed to alter the public perception of him as a dull, ponderous, but essentially courteous curmudgeon. Despite a lack of popularity, Masters continued to publish: A late poetry collection, Illinois Poems (1941), contains the title "Petersburg," recapturing a boyhood residence; The Sangamon (1942) lauds the beauties of the American Midwest. Masters died in a nursing home in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, on March 5, 1950. He was buried in nearby Oakland Cemetery. His Petersburg home became a museum.
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