The Hoax That Backfired (1877)
Bill Peschel (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
E arly in James Whitcomb Riley's writing career, he tried to prove that for a poem to be popular, it had to be by somebody famous. He wrote "Leonainie" in the style of a well-known poet and convinced the Indiana newspaper he worked for to print it under that name. To help stir up some controversy, Riley wrote an anonymous article in a rival paper claiming that the poem was a hoax. But...
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