Last weekend I visited Graceland Cemetery, final resting place to many notable—and notorious—Chicagoans. As I walked, my thoughts turned to unfinished business, which is what I like to call the stack of books currently serving as my bedside table. It wasn't long before I was wildly speculating on the reading habits of Graceland's latest and greatest for this special Halloween edition of Caught Reading. Join me, won't you?
One of Graceland's oldest graves belongs to Pinkerton agent and Civil War spy Kate Warne, America's first female detective. Buried in 1868, Warne might have enjoyed either the classic English house mystery The Moonstone or the American standard Little Women, both bestsellers in her day.
Inventor and business magnate Cyrus McCormick and Kate Warne's boss Allan Pinkerton followed her in 1884. Let's hope that before they did, they had time to enjoy fellow Midwesterner Mark Twain's 1884 classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
In 1899, Chicago Tribune editor and former mayor of Chicago Joseph Medill joined their ranks. My guess is that Heart of Darkness would have been in his bedside stack, although The Awakening, published the same year, is also a possibility.
Chicago classic The Jungle was published in 1906, the same year that department store giant, Marshall Field, was interred.
And finally, in 1946, the first African-American heavyweight boxing champ, Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant, came home to Graceland. I think the native-born Southerner might have enjoyed All the King's Men.
Other Graceland notables include Daniel Burnham, George Pullman, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan. What do you think they would have been caught reading?
Add a comment to: Caught Reading: Ghosts of Graceland Cemetery, October 2016