Edgar Albert Guest

Edgar Albert Guest was a British-born U.S. writer whose poems were widely read during the first half of the 20th century. Guest’s family relocated from Warwickshire, England to the United States in 1891, when Guest was 10 years old.

Edgar Guest began his career at the Detroit Free Press in 1895, where he first worked as a copyboy. He was soon promoted to police writer and later to exchange editor, and in 1904 he began writing verse for the Free Press under the heading "Chaff." Those columns evolved into an immensely popular daily feature entitled "Breakfast Table Chat," which, at the height of its popularity, was syndicated in about 300 other newspapers. In 1916 Guest published A Heap O' Livin', a collection of verse that eventually sold more than 1,000,000 copies. That work was followed by Just Folks (1918), Rhythms of Childhood (1924), Life's Highway (1933), and Living the Years (1949).