These pages represent an effort to give some hint of the forces that have made for cultivation in Indiana. While the immediate purpose has been an examination of the State’s performance in literature, it has seemed proper to approach the subject with a slight review of Indiana’s political and social history. Owing to limitations of space, much is suggested merely which it would be profitable to discuss at length. It is hoped that such matters as racial influences, folk-speech, etc., which are bu

The rise of Indiana as an enlightened commonwealth has been accompanied by phenomena of unusual interest and variety, and whatever contributions the State may make to the total of national achievement in any department of endeavor are to be appraised in the light of her history and development. The origin of the beginners of the State, the influences that wrought upon them, the embarrassments that have attended the later generations in their labors, become matters of moment in any inquiry that i

The origin of the term “Hoosier” is not known with certainty. It has been applied to the inhabitants of Indiana for many years, and, after “Yankee,” it is probably the sobriquet most famous as applied to the people of a particular division of the country. So early as 1830, “Hoosier” must have had an accepted meaning, within the State at least, for John Finley printed in that year, as a New Year’s address for the Indianapolis Journal , a poem called “The Hoosier Nest,” in which the word occurs se

In his address to the annual council of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Indiana in 1863, Bishop Upfold spoke with much vigor against the use of flowers in the decoration of churches, and said:— “There is no sound principle, no true doctrine involved in the practice. It is all poetry, and the very romance of poetry, the conception of romantic and imaginative minds, dictated less by religious sentiment than by a fondness for show and gaudy display. Instead of the decoration concentrating the a

New Harmony , the scene of Robert Owen’s experiment in socialism, lies in Posey County, in the far southwestern corner of Indiana. The village is without direct communication with the outer world, but may be approached by boat on the Wabash River, or by a branch railroad which ends abruptly at New Harmony after a rough course through wheat fields, which are, in spring and summer, a charming feature of the landscape of this region. George Rapp gave expression to his peculiar religious ideas in th

Switzerland County lies in the far southeastern corner of the State, and Vevay, its principal town and capital, is on the Ohio River. The name of the county is explained by the fact of its settlement by Swiss immigrants, who were drawn thither by the supposed adaptability of the soil to the growth of the grape. Vevay lies about midway between Louisville and Cincinnati, and the steamboats plying between these two cities are its only medium of communication with the world, as no railway touches it

Crabbe and Burns are Mr. Riley’s forefathers in literature. Crabbe was the pioneer in what may be called the realism of poetry; it was he who rejected the romantic pastoralism that had so long peopled the British fields with nymphs and shepherds, and introduced the crude but actual country folk of England. The humor, the bold democracy, and the social sophistication that he lacked were supplied in his own day by Burns, and Burns had, too, the singing instinct and the bolder art of which there ar

General Lew Wallace, whose varied achievements have contributed so largely to the town’s fame, was not born at Crawfordsville, but at Brookville, in Franklin County, April 10, 1827. His father, David Wallace, had resigned from the regular army soon after his graduation from West Point in 1821. He studied law at Brookville, and soon began an interesting public career. He was one of the political giants of the State in his day, holding many offices and positions of honor. His first wife, General W

No other Indianian has lived so faithfully as Maurice Thompson a life devoted to literary ideals, and none of his contemporaries among writers of the West and South has been more loyally devoted to pure belles-lettres than he. Abstract beauty has appealed to him more strongly than to any other writer of the Indiana group, and he has expressed it in his poems, through media suggested by his own environment, with charm and grace. He is a native of Indiana, having been born at Fairfield, near Brook

Mary H. Krout, another Crawfordsville author, has added to the distinction of an Indiana family in which an admiral, George Brown, and several scholars and scientists have appeared. In her girlhood she wrote the verses “Little Brown Hands,” which have enjoyed a vitality not always relished by the author, whose later and longer flights are better deserving of recognition. Miss Krout has been an indefatigable traveller, and her books include “Hawaii and a Revolution” (1898), an account of her pers

Booth Tarkington stands with Mr. Riley as the exponent of a Hoosier who is kindly, generous, humorous, and essentially domestic. His novel, “A Gentleman from Indiana” (1899), depicts the semi-urban type that Mr. Riley so often celebrates in verse. Whitecapping as introduced in this story is only the coarse exploit of a vicious colony living on the outskirts of the town in which Mr. Tarkington’s tale has its habitation. The author plainly states that his whitecaps are not to be confounded with vi

It is a pleasure to include George W. Julian (1817-1899) among those who have added lustre to Indiana’s name. He was born at Centerville, Wayne County, of Quaker parents who had followed the familiar line of march from North Carolina to Indiana. He worked in the fields, studied by the light of the fireplace, taught school, read law, and in general experienced those vicissitudes and embarrassments that beset so many ambitious American youths of his generation. The law was a stepping-stone to poli

The press of Indiana has aided greatly in the State’s intellectual advance. In the larger towns the newspapers have usually been well-written, and many of them have extended sympathetic encouragement to beginners in authorship. Many Western writers found their first friendly editors at the offices of the Herald or Journal at Indianapolis. John H. Holliday, G. C. Matthews, Anna Nicholas, Elijah W. Halford, Charles Richard Williams, A. H. Dooley, Lewis D. Hayes, Morris Ross and Louis Howland are a

The specific talent necessary to the expression of local life is much rarer than the ability to write of life in the abstract. If the knack of writing accompanied a sensibility to the life that lay nearest, we should long ago have had an abundant American literature descriptive of conditions that have passed and will not, in the very nature of things, recur. But the line of impressionability may not be controlled; and though many protests have been launched against minor American poets for looki

It is an abrupt transition from these pioneers of poesy to Forceythe Willson, the only Indiana poet who ever came in contact with the New England group. Emerson, in the preface to his “Parnassus” (1874), says, “I have inserted only one of the remarkable poems of Forceythe Willson, a young Wisconsin poet of extraordinary promise, who died very soon after this was written.” The poem chosen was “In State.” This placing of Willson in Wisconsin is, as Piatt says in his eloquent sketch of the poet, [4

Willson marked the beginning of better things, and a livelier fancy and a keener critical spirit is henceforward observable—in the writings of a veteran like Parker, and in the new company of writers that was forming. The Civil War had profoundly moved the Central States, and Indiana had perhaps felt it more than her neighbors. Willson had lifted his voice for the Union while the war cloud still lay upon the land, and the Thompson brothers spoke for the South from Indiana soil on the arrival of