President Theodore Roosevelt called it “the most American thing in America.” With its passing, it’s been said, “the American middle class in the interior lost something valuable.” The Chautauqua movement brought religion, politics, culture and entertainment to small towns and rural outposts across the United States from the 1870s through the 1920s.
The eldest son of a prominent Virginian, Edward Eggleston was born in Vevay, Indiana on the Ohio River in 1837. Eggleston’s novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster is recognized as a flagship of the regionalist literature that flourished in the United States after the Civil War.
Whether traveling or back home, people from Indiana are used to seemingly endless speculation about their nickname, Hoosier.
James Whitcomb Riley's four-stanza poem "Little Orphant Annie" became the basis of a comic strip, a musical, a film, and even a doll.
Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley worked as a sign painter, traveling actor, and newspaperman before finally enjoying success. He was initially turned away by many of the larger publishers.