Poets

Edgar Albert Guest was a British-born American poet who became known as the People's Poet. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life. Guest was born in Birmingham, England in 1881. In 1891, his family moved from England to Detroit, Michigan, where Guest lived until he died.

His first published poem first appeared in Detroit Free Pass, the biggest newspaper in Detroit in which he worked there as a copy boy and a reporter later, on 11 December 1898. In 1902 he became an American naturalized citizen. From his first published work in the Detroit Free Press until his death in 1959, Guest wrote approximately 11,000 poems. He was pretty popular in the US because of his light, optimistic style.

Edgar Albert Guest Nationality and his Early Life

In 1895, the year before Henry Ford took his first ride in a motor carriage, Eddie Guest signed on with the Free Press as a 13-year-old office boy. He stayed for 60 years.

In those six decades, Detroit underwent half a dozen identity changes, but Eddie Guest became a steadfast character on the changing scene.

Three years after he joined the Free Press, Guest became a cub reporter. He quickly worked his way through the labor beat -- a much less consequential beat than it is today -- the waterfront beat and the police beat, where he worked "the dog watch" -- 3 p.m. to 3 a.m.

By the end of that year -- the year he should have been completing high school -- Guest had a reputation as a scr..