For 40 years, Guest was widely read throughout North America, and his sentimental, optimistic poems were in the same vein as the light verse of Nick Kenny, who wrote syndicated columns during the same decades.

From his first published work in the Detroit Free Press until his death in 1959, Guest penned some 11,000 poems which were syndicated in some 300 newspapers and collected in more than 20 books, including A Heap o' Livin' (1916) and Just Folks (1923–1957).

[4] His popularity led to a weekly Detroit radio show which he hosted from 1931 until 1942, followed by a 1951 NBC television series, A Guest in Your House.

In honor of Guest's devotion to the Craft, community, and humanity in general, the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Michigan established the Edgar A.

However, in one of the most quoted appraisals of his work, Dorothy Parker reputedly said: "I'd rather flunk my Wassermann test than read a poem by Edgar Guest.

The book's author goes out of his way to praise Melville and disparage Guest as a "writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics.

"[11] In the novel I Am Legend, the main character Robert Neville sardonically comments on his own internal monologue: "The last man in the world is Edgar Guest".