James Whitcomb Riley is known as the 'Hoosier Poet,' but it was one of his famous pranks that led to him gaining national notoriety.
Born in 1849, the Greenfield native struggled gaining notoriety in the early portion of his life. Shortly after leaving at the age of 16, Riley joined other youth, traveling the Indiana countryside painting signs, ornaments and houses. It was in his time as a painter where the legend of Riley as a prankster began.
Riley's interest moved to writing as he joined his first newspaper in 1873, and joined the Anderson Democrat in April 1977. It was there where he grew his writing style.
"He did not care much for statistics," wrote The Kansas City Star. "But obituary notices of dead dogs, departed birds and pathetic events written by him made better reading, and showed the tender nature of the writer."
Riley struggled to gain prominence for his work, and two months after joining the Democrat, he would pull off his greatest prank.
"[Western poets] work wasn't getting published in the prominent literary magazines and in the prominent newspapers, which were all generated on the east coast," says Chris Mize, James Whitcomb Riley Museum Coordinator. "So in 1877, he and a group of his friends, a couple local newspaper publishers, got together and decided to play a prank, where they took an old book and they had James Whitcomb Riley write a poem in the style of Edgar Allen Poe on the inside of this book."
The poem, titled Leonainie, first appeared in the Kokomo Democrat on August 2nd, 1877,
The prank soon snowballed into something far beyond what Riley intended.
"Some were skeptical that this was a lost Poe poem, but a lot of people accepted it, including the members of that kind of literary league that he was trying to prank," Mize says.
Eventually, Riley was forced to admit his authorship of the poem after several publications, beginning with The New Castle Mercury, caught on to the prank.
Consequently, Riley was fired from his position at the Anderson Democrat. Thinking his career was over, Riley moved back home to Greenfield. Eventually, the backlash subsided, and Riley was able to continue his career.
"After the initial anger washed away, people recognized his point that there was too much discrimination going on against western writers, and people started admiring his moxie and his sense of humor," Mize says.
