Robert W. Edgren

Robert Wadsworth Edgren (January 7, 1874 – September 9, 1939) was a nationally syndicated American political and sports cartoonist, reporter, editor and Olympic athlete.

Edgren was born in Chicago, Illinois. During the 1890s Edgren studied at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. Edgren attended the University of California at Berkeley where he was a member of the first Western track team to enter competitive events in the East. He competed in the discus and shot put for the American Olympic team at the 1906 Summer Olympics in Athens.

He began his journalism career in 1895 at the original Hearst newspaper, The San Francisco Examiner. He was given the "inconsequential" job of a "handy man" with the Examiner but his work on the build-up to the historic 1897 world heavyweight championship between Bob Fitzsimmons and "Gentleman Jim" Corbett launched his career.

He was transferred to the Hearst paper in New York, The Evening Journal, where he was appointed political cartoonist.

He was dispatched to Cuba to cover the Spanish–American War in 1898. Reporting from the scenes of intense fighting, Edgren became famous for his "Sketches from Death," images of war atrocities that shocked readers of Hearst papers across America. When William Randolph Hearst himself told Edgren, "Don't exaggerate so much," an angered Edgren produced 500 photographs to prove the accuracy of his drawings. The images were eventually displayed before the United States Congress, causing a sensation.

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