My husband has been helping me add to my collection of books. He recently bought these old works and presented them to me.
You will see that three of the books Riley Songs of Home (1910), Riley Songs of Summer (1908), and Riley Songs O'Cheer (1905) are the works of James Whitcomb Riley whose dialect and sentimental words made him one of the most popular poets in America.
Riley helped form Midwestern cultural identity and is well known as the Hoosiers poet having passed in Indianapolis on July 22, 1916. He's memorialized with Riley's Hospital for Children which enhances pediatric healthcare for children and their families.
I enjoy the writing and appreciate that all three books of Riley's contain images by John William Vawter ( Will Vawter). He was an impressive Indiana landscape and portrait artist. Vawter's career began in the 1890s as an illustrator for newspapers and he was well known for his drawings that appeared in the children’s books of Riley. John William Vawter passed in Nashville, Indiana, on February 11, 1941.
Vawter's sister was Indiana author Clara Vawter.
The other book I received is The Best Short Stories of William Somerset Maugham (1957)who is known as a great short story writer, novelist, and playwright.
If you wish to learn more about Maugham you can read his work or watch the conversation with him titled Somerset Maugham interview 1955. He passed 10 years after this interview on December 16, 1965, in Nice, France.