SOURCE: Nicholson, Meredith. “The Hoosier Interpreted: James Whitcomb Riley.” In The Hoosiers, pp. 156-76. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1900.

In the following essay, Nicholson argues that Riley is both an important regional and an important national writer.

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 are no traces in Crabbe. Something of Crabbe's realism and Burns's humor and philosophy are agreeably combined in Mr. Riley. His first successes were achieved...