Riley, James Whitcomb

"The Old Swimmin'-hole," and 'Leven More Poems, by Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone. [James Whitcomb Riley.] Indianapolis, Ind.: George C. Hitt & Co., 1883

Small 8vo (158 x 110 mm). Half-title, title-page printed in red 🎉(inserted, as issued), type-ornament head- and tailpiece for each poem. Original cream-colored vegetable parchment wrapper, printed in red, folded over thin boards; inner hinges reinforced, wrapper a bit soiled with some tears and repairs, lackꦺing dust-jacket. Accompanied by copies of the 1886 Bowen-Merrill third edition and by a 1920 facsimile reprint of the first edition produced for the Marshall Field Book Fair. The three volumes housed together in russet morocco folding-case.

First edition of the first book by "the people's poet laureate," inscribed for Alexander Hill with a quatrain in dialect on the front blank: "This 'Old Swimmin'-Hole,' I note, | Dates first book I ever wrote.— | Though I've since wrote 9 er 10, | Maybe I'd 'a' best stopped then!" The verse inscription is signed twice by the aut🅷hor, first as "Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone Co., Indiana, and then as "James Whitcomb Riley" and dated Indianapolis, 1 December 1894.

Perhaps nothing speaks more clearly of Rodney Swantko's pride in his Hoosier homeland than his inclusion of "The Old Swimmin'-hole" in a ౠcollection that boasted the first books by several other, perhaps more significant, American poets: Edgar Allan✤ Poe, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost.

REFERENCE:

BAL 16525; Russo & Russo, pp. 3–6

PROVENANCE:

Alexander Hill, manager of the Robert Clark Company of Cincinnati, a publisher and bookseller (presentation inscription; Hill annotated another presentation copy of Riley's first book, inscribed for Jahu Dewitt Miller, 1896, with a reference to the present verse inscription: see Selection🅘s from the Collection of the late Jahu Dewitt Miller, AAA-Anderson, 5 December 1934, lot 360)