James Whitcomb Riley Biography | Poet

James Whitcomb Riley, potentially the most generally read native poet of his time, was born in a small community twenty miles from Indianapolis on October 7, 1849, in Greenfield, Indiana, where he lived until his later years. Despite common belief, as many thought from his agricultural dialect verse, Riley was not a poor child of the earth. His father was a well-to-do lawyer, and Riley was educated and well-prepared for a law career. His temperament, however, craved something more adventurous. At 18, he shut down his office to join a traveling company of actors who sold medicines during the intermissions. Riley's functions were varied: he beat the bass drum, painted flaring banners, wrote local versions of old songs, and coached the actors. When the occasion arose, he even took part in the performances.

Even before this time, Riley had begun to send poems to newspapers, frank experiments, bits of homely sentiment, simple snatches, and elaborate hoaxes—the poem "Leonainie," published under the initials "E. A. P.," was being assumed a newly discovered poem by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1882, when he was on the staff of the Indianapolis Journal, he began the series of dialect poems which he claimed were by a rude and unlettered farmer, one "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone, the Hoosier poet"—printing long extracts from "Boone's" ungrammatical and badly-spelt letters to prove his find. A collection of these rustic verses was released in 1883 as The Ole Swimmin' Hole, and Riley leaped into widespread popularity.

Other works, such as Afterwhiles (1887), Old-Fashioned Roses (1888), Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury (1889), and Rhymes of Childhood (1890), soon followed. All received an instant response as Riley endeared himself with his idioms and childlike ingenuity, which appealed to both adolescent and adult readers.

But Riley's simplicity is not always as artless as it seems. Time and time again, we can see him presuming wantonly on the feelings of his simple readers; he observes them about to smile—and increases the point of his joke; he sees them at the point of tears—and delays the impetus for their crying. He is the poet of noticeable sentiment instead of obscure beliefs, whose assuring philosophies never bothered his readers. He encourages nice truisms rather than digging for truths.

Riley's lasting works will endure because of the individual touch he added to them. Such poems as "When the Frost is on the Punkin," "The Raggedy Man," and "Our Hired Girl" are a part of American folk literature; "Little Orphant Annie" is read wherever there is a schoolhouse or, for that matter, a nursery. In 1912, the schools throughout the country observed his birthday.

He died in his small house on Lockerbie Street, Indianapolis, on July 22, 1916.