Riley’s prose about Midwestern life touched the hearts of readers throughout the country. Not only was his verse about everyday, familiar objects but he wrote in a dialect that sounded warm and friendly. In 1896, the writer Hamlin Garland said, He is read by people who never before read poetry in their lives. In Ben-Hur to Sister Carrie: Remembering the Lives and Works of Five Indiana Authors, biographer Barbara Olenyik Morrow gives some insight into just how popular the poet was: Known as The Hoosier Poet, he was in reality the people’s poet, a man whose poems were recited in homes and schoolhouses across the nation. It is rare for a poet to be so loved and heralded during his lifetime. Riley was known as the Poet of the People and created timeless pieces such as Little Orphant Annie. and President Woodrow Wilson, on the occasion of Riley’s sixty-sixth birthday in 1915, wrote: “affectionate appreciation for the many pleasures has given me, along with the rest of the great body of readers of English.”
Rudyard Kipling composed a poem to J.W.R. Literary greats such as Mark Twain considered Riley to be one of the top poetry readers and wittiest storytellers in America. More than eighty-six years after his death, James Whitcomb Riley still inspires youth and adults with his poetry and gifted storytelling. Author Edgar Lee Masters observed that Riley, put Indiana as a place and a people in the memory of America, more thoroughly and more permanently than has been done by any other poet before or since his day. The Indiana poet’s childhood home attracts thousands of visitors every year. Although his family wanted him to follow his father’s example and become an attorney, Riley had trouble focusing in school and spent his days dreaming and enjoying local pleasures, such as swimming in Brandywine Creek. She enjoyed telling stories as she baked over an open hearth and even penned some poetry of her own. James doted on his mother, Elizabeth, who had bright, blue eyes, and was kind and loving. Riley’s father, Reuben was known as an excellent story teller as well, and James grew up sitting at his father’s feet and hearing the man he looked up to telling tales to company.
He often told her stories to entertain her. Humboldt and Martha died when they were very young. He had five brothers and sisters: John, Martha, Elva May, Humboldt, and Mary. Riley’s family had a huge impact on his future as a writer. The dwelling was originally a log cabin, but as his father’s law practice grew, and the family grew, the Riley’s replaced the cabin with a two-story home with green shutters. The poet was born in the house on October 7, 1849. Just east of Indianapolis sandwiched between corn fields and soybean crops a few hundred feet from the Old National Road (US 40) rests the James Whitcomb Riley Old Home and Museum.
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