Meet the Author
John Rollin Ridge
Cherokee American · 1827–1867 · Poet, novelist, and journalist
Portrait: Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Cherokee writer and California journalist whose 1854 book about Joaquin Murieta is often called the first novel by a Native American.
1 StoryBites Edition1 Poem
Why read John Rollin Ridge?
Ridge wrote in the elevated Romantic style popular in 19th-century American magazines, and his poems reach toward nature’s grandest sights. To a Star Seen at Twilight addresses a solitary star, compares the speaker’s lonely spirit to it, and ends by praising solitude itself. Read it for its use of apostrophe and for a speaker who turns isolation into a kind of greatness.
A life in six dates
- 1827Born in the Cherokee Nation, in what is now Georgia
- 1839His father and grandfather are killed by Cherokee opponents of the removal treaty they had signed
- 1850Goes to California during the Gold Rush
- 1854Publishes The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta
- 1867Dies in Grass Valley, California
- 1868Poems is published in San Francisco, including To a Star Seen at Twilight
Themes across the work
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
Cherokee removalThe forced removal of the Cherokee from their Southeastern homeland in the late 1830s, and the violence over the treaty that allowed it, shaped Ridge’s early life.
Gold Rush CaliforniaRidge made his living as a writer and newspaper editor in the new state of California.
Romantic poetry in AmericaRidge wrote in the formal, lofty manner of his day, full of apostrophe and praise of nature.