Hoosier author James Buchanan Elmore, lauded as “the bard of Alamo,” is well remembered for his local color writings, but until now there has been no comprehensive study of his homespun life as a farmer, sometime schoolteacher, or—more importantly—of his extensive contributions as a folk poet and regional ethnographer in the heartland. With this new volume, foremost authority on Indiana folklore Ronald Baker delivers the scholarly attention that Elmore’s life and work deserve. Elmore’s prose and poetry, Baker shows us, chronicle the substance of small town folklife in 19th- and early 20th-century Indiana, at a pivotal moment when agrarian communities grappled with the shifting social order that came along with industrialism and mass culture. Informative, insightful, and imminently readable, James Buchanan Elmore (1857-1942): Literary Ethnographer and Folk Poet will appeal to folklorists, historians, ethnologists, or anyone interested Midwestern literature and regionalism.

Dr. Greg Kelley, author of Unruly Audience: Folk Interventions in Popular Media

In his study of James Buchanan Elmore, Ronald Baker has rescued from obscurity an authentic voice of the nineteenth-century Midwest. The prose and poetry of this once-popular farmer-poet celebrated rural and small-town Indiana in the tradition of other “rustic” writers and, as Baker’s analysis shows, provides an insider’s perspective of a wealth of traditional lore and activities: work bees, dumb suppers, courting traditions, and even the underground railroad. This is a significant contribution to the study of early Midwestern folklore and social history.

Jon Kasparek, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

This study challenges us to reconsider disciplinary configurations that have tended to exclude or devalue the contributions of figures like the self-described “farmer-poet” James Buchanan Elmore. Pairing careful archival research with a masterful survey of relevant scholarship, Ron Baker honors Elmore’s legacy -- as a fellow literary ethnographer and local historian.

Jennifer Schacker, University of Guelph