The Hoosier Schoolmaster: A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 1871
AS A PEBBLE CAST UPON A GREAT CAIRN, THIS EDITION IS INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, WHOSE CORDIAL ENCOURAGEMENT TO MY EARLY STUDIES OF AMERICAN DIALECT IS GRATEFULLY REMEMBERED. THE AUTHOR.
THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-MASTER was written and printed in the autumn of 1871. It is therefore now about twenty-one years old, and the publishers propose to mark its coming of age by issuing a library edition. I avail myself of the occasion to make some needed revisions, and to preface the new edition with an account of the origin and adventures of the book. If I should seem to betray unbecoming pride in speaking of a story that has passed into several languages and maintained an undiminished popularity for more than a score of years, I count on receiving the indulgence commonly granted to paternal vanity when celebrating the majority of a first-born. With all its faults on its head, this little tale has become a classic, in the bookseller's sense at least; and a public that has shown so constant a partiality for it has a right to feel some curiosity regarding its history.
I persuade myself that additional extenuation for this biography of a book is to be found in the relation which The Hoosier School-Master happens to bear to the most significant movement in American literature in our generation. It is the file-leader of the procession of American dialect novels. Before the appearance of this story, the New England folk-speech had long been employed for various literary purposes, it is true; and after its use by Lowell, it had acquired a standing that made it the classic lingua rustica of the United States. Even Hoosiers and Southerners when put into print, as they sometimes were in rude burlesque stories, usually talked about huskin' bees and apple-parin' bees and used many other expressions foreign to their vernacular. American literature hardly touched the speech and life of the people outside of New England; in other words, it was provincial in the narrow sense.