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Born in Birmingham, England, on August 20, 1881, Edgar A. Guest settled with his family in Detroit in 1891. Starting in 1895 as a copy boy at the Detroit Free Press, Guest worked his way up as police reporter, exchange editor, and verse columnist. His first, weekly column, "Chaff," began in 1904 and eventually became the daily "Breakfast Table Chat," which was ultimately syndicated to 300 newspapers throughout the United States. His fourth volume of poetry, A Heap o' Livin', reputedly sold more than one million copies. He broadcast weekly from Chicago on NBC radio from 1931 to 1942. (For example, in the 1937-38 season his program, "Edgar Guest in Welcome Valley," was sponsored by Household Finance on Tuesdays from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. and ran on 18 stations.) In 1951 NBC broadcast his "A Guest in Your Home" on television.
On June 28, 1906, Guest and Nellie Crossman married. They had two children. Guest was a Mason, a member of the Episcopal church, and a lifelong golfer. Late in life Guest was given several honorary degrees, notably by the University of Michigan in 1955.
Guest authored over 20 volumes of poetry. At his death on August 5, 1959, he was affectionately called "the poet of the people" because he wrote of everyday family lives with deep sentimentality. He was thought to have penned over 11,000 poems in his lifetime, many of them in fourteeners, which have been neglected by major poets for centuries. The Detroit Public Library holds information about his writings, and the Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library and University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library house his papers and manuscripts. Academic anthologies usually omit his works, possibly because in them he unashamedly wears his heart on his sleave and leaves little room for multiple interpretations. Possibly his best-known poem is "It Couldn't be Done." His Collected Verse appeared in 1934 and went into at least 11 editions.
