James Whitcomb Riley

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and bestselling author. During his lifetime he was known as the Hoosier Poet and Childrens Poet for his dialect works and his childrens poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include Little Orphant Annie and The Raggedy Man.

James Whitcomb Riley was born on October 7, 1849, in the town of Greenfield, Indiana, the third of the six children of Reuben Andrew and Elizabeth Marine Riley. Rileys father was an attorney, and in the year before Rileys birth, he was elected a member of the Indiana House of Representatives as a Democrat. He developed a friendship with James Whitcomb, the governor of Indiana, after whom he named his son. Martin Riley, Rileys uncle, was an amateur poet who occasionally wrote verses for local newspapers. Riley was fond of his uncle who helped influence his early interest in poetry.

Source: Wikipedia