Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Totally Explained

Everything about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow totally explained

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets.
Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1842). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, though he lived the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a former headquarters of George Washington.
Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poetry, known for its musicality, which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.

Life and work

Early life and education

Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807 to Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine, and he grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress. He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who died only three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli.
Longfellow's siblings were Stephen (1805), Elizabeth (1808), Anne (1810), Alexander (1814), Mary (1816), Ellen (1818), and Samuel (1819). Henry was enrolled in a dame school at the age of only three and by age six was enrolled at the private Portland Academy. In his years there, he earned a reputation as being very studious and became fluent in Latin. He remained at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen. He spent much of his summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm in the western Maine town of Hiram.
In the fall of 1822, the 15-year old Longfellow enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine alongside his brother Stephen. His grandfather was a founder of the college and his father was a trustee. He boarded with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor of what is now Maine Hall in 1823. He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students with Federalist leanings. In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations:

"I won't disguise it in the least... the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres in it... I'm almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature."

He pursued his literary goals by submitting poetry and prose to various newspapers and magazines. Between January 1824 and his graduation in 1825, he'd published nearly 40 minor poems. About 24 of them appeared in the short-lived Boston periodical The United States Literary Gazette. Whatever the motivation, he began his tour of Europe in May 1826 aboard the ship Cadmus. His time abroad would last three years and cost his father an estimated $2,604.24. He traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, back to France, then England before returning to the United States in mid-August 1829. While in Madrid, he spent time with Washington Irving and was encouraged by the author to write. Longfellow was saddened to learn his favorite sister Elizabeth had died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 that May while he was abroad.
   On August 27, 1829, he wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 salary "disproportionate to the duties required." The trustees raised his salary to $800 with an additional $100 to serve as the college's librarian, a post which required one hour of work per day. During his years at the college, he wrote textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish and a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. On September 14, 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter, a childhood friend from Portland. The couple settled in Brunswick, though the two were not happy there.
   In December 1834, Longfellow received a letter from Josiah Quincy III, president of Harvard College, offering him a position as the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad. In October 1835, during the trip, his wife Mary had a miscarriage about six months into her pregnancy. She didn't recover and died after several weeks of illness at the age of 22 on November 29, 1835. Longfellow had her body embalmed immediately and placed into a lead coffin inside an oak coffin which was then shipped to Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston. Three years later, he was inspired to write "Footsteps of Angels" about their love. Several years later, he wrote the poem "Mezzo Cammin" to express his sorrow over her death.
   When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard University. He was required to live in Cambridge to be close to the campus and moved in to the Craigie House in the spring of 1837, now preserved as the Longfellow National Historic Site. The home, built in 1759, had once been the headquarters of George Washington during the siege of Boston in July 1775. Previous occupants also included Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, and Joseph Emerson Worcester. Longfellow began publishing his poetry, including Voices of the Night in 1839 and Ballads and Other Poems in 1842. The latter included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly popular.

Courtship of Frances "Fanny" Appleton

Longfellow began courting Frances "Fanny" Appleton, the daughter of a wealthy Boston industrialist, Nathan Appleton. At first, she wasn't interested but Longfellow was determined. In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: "[V]ictory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It isn't pride, but the madness of passion." During the courtship, he frequently walked from Harvard to her home in Boston, crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was subsequently demolished and replaced in 1906 by a new bridge, which was eventually renamed the Longfellow Bridge.
   During his courtship, Longfellow continued writing and, in the fall of 1839, published Hyperion, a book of travel writings discussing his trips abroad. There was some confusion over its original manuscript. After being printed in Graham's Magazine, its editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold saved the manuscript from the trash. Longfellow was surprised to hear that it had been saved, unusual for a printing office, and asked to borrow it so that he could revise it, forgetting to return it to Griswold. The often vindictive Griswold wrote an angry letter in response.
   On May 10, 1843, after seven years, Longfellow received a letter from Fanny agreeing to marry him and, too restless to take a carriage, walked 90 minutes to meet her at her house. They were married shortly thereafter. Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House as a wedding present to the pair. Longfellow would live there for the remainder of his life. His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from Longfellow's only love poem, the sonnet "The Evening Star", which he wrote in October, 1845: "O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus! My morning and my evening star of love!"
   He and Fanny had six children: Charles Appleton (1844-1893), Ernest Wadsworth (1845-1921), Fanny (1847-1848), Alice Mary (1850-1928), Edith (1853-1915), and Anne Allegra (1855-1934). Their second-youngest daughter, Edith, married Richard Henry Dana III, son of the popular poet Richard Henry Dana. When the younger Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep administered ether as the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States to Fanny Longfellow. A few months later, on November 1, 1847, the poem "Evangeline" was published for the first time. Shortly thereafter in 1854, Longfellow retired from Harvard, devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from Harvard in 1859.

Death of Frances

On July 9, 1861, a hot day, Fanny was putting locks of her children's hair into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax while Longfellow took a nap. Her dress suddenly caught fire, though it's unclear exactly how; it may have been burning wax or a lighted candle which fell on her dress. Longfellow, awoken from his nap, rushed to help her and threw a rug over her, though it was too small. He stifled the flames with his body as best he could, but she was already badly burned. Longfellow, in trying to save her, had burned himself badly enough that he was unable to attend her funeral. His own injuries to his face were bad enough that he stopped shaving, thereafter wearing the beard which has become his trademark. He expressed his grief in the sonnet "The Cross of Snow" (1879), which he wrote eighteen years later to commemorate her death: The "Dante Club", as it was called, regularly included William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton and other occasional guests.
On August 22, 1879, a female admirer went to Longfellow's house in Cambridge and, unaware to whom she was speaking, asked Longfellow: "Is this the house where Longfellow was born?" Longfellow told her it was not. The visitor then asked if he'd died here. "Not yet", he replied. In March 1882, Longfellow went to bed with severe stomach pain. He endured the pain for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24, 1882. He had been suffering from peritonitis. He is buried with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Writing

Style

Longfellow often used allegory in his work. In "Nature", for example, death is depicted as bedtime for a cranky child. Many of the metaphors he used in his poetry as well as subject matter came from legends, mythology, and literature. He was inspired, for example, by Norse mythology for "The Skeleton in Armor" and by Finnish legends for "The Song of Hiawatha". In fact, Longfellow rarely wrote on current subjects and seemed detached from contemporary American concerns. Even so, Longfellow, like many during this period, called for the development of quality American literature. In Kavanagh, a character says:

"We want a national literature commensurate with our mountains and rivers... We want a national epic that'll correspond to the size of the country... We want a national drama in which scope shall be given to our gigantic ideas and to the unparalleled activity of our people... In a word, we want a national literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that'll shake the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies."

Though he often used didacticism in his poetry, he focused on it less in his later years. Much of his work is recognized for its melody-like musicality. Though much of his work is categorized as lyric poetry, he occasionally experimented with form, trying hexameter and free verse. He was also important as a translator; his translation of Dante became a required possession for those who wanted to be a part of high culture.

Critical response

Longfellow's early collections, Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems, made him instantly popular. The The New Yorker called him "one of the very few in our time who has successfully aimed in putting poetry to its best and sweetest uses." The Southern Literary Messenger immediately put Longfellow "among the first of our American poets." In the last two decades of his life, he often received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent.
Contemporary writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote to Longfellow in May 1841 of his "fervent admiration which [your] genius has inspired in me" and later called him "unquestionably the best poet in America". However, after Poe's reputation as a critic increased, he publicly accused Longfellow of plagiarism in what has been since termed by Poe biographers as "The Longfellow War". His assessment was that Longfellow was "a determined imitator and a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people", His accusations may have been a publicity stunt to boost readership of the Broadway Journal, for which he was the editor at the time. Margaret Fuller judged him "artificial and imitative" and lacking force. Poet Walt Whitman also considered Longfellow an imitator of European forms, though he praised his ability to reach a popular audience as "the expressor of common themes - of the little songs of the masses." Lewis Mumford said that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect. as many of his readers were children. One more modern critic said, "Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow?"

Legacy

   Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day. He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. He had become one of the first American celebrities and was also popular in Europe. It was reported that 10,000 copies of The Courtship of Miles Standish sold in London in a single day. In 1884 he was the first and only American poet for whom a commemorative sculpted bust was placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
   Longfellow's home in Cambridge, the Longfellow National Historic Site, is a U.S. National Historic Site, National Historic Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places. A two-thirds scale replica was built in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Minnehaha Park in 1906 and once served as a centerpiece for a local zoo.
   More recently, he was honored in March 2007 when the United States Postal Service made a stamp commemorating him. A number of schools are named after him in various states as well. He is a protagonist in Matthew Pearl's murder mystery The Dante Club.

List of works

Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (Travelogue) (1835)
Hyperion, a Romance (1839)
The Spanish Student. A Play in Three Acts (1843)
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (epic poem) (1847)
"Kavanagh: A Tale" (1849)
"The Golden Legend" (poem)(1851)
The Song of Hiawatha (epic poem) (1855)
The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems (1858)
The Children's Hour (1860)
Household Poems (1865)
The New England Tragedies (1868)
The Divine Tragedy (1871)
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Three Books of Song (1872)
"Aftermath" (poem)(1873)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
Kéramos and Other Poems (1878)
The Reaper and the Flowers (unknown)
The Bell of Atri (From The Sicilian's Tale)(1863-1872) Poetry collections
Birds of Passage
Voices of the Night (1839)
Ballads and Other Poems (1842)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
Flower-de-Luce (1867)
Ultima Thule (1880)
In the Harbor (1882)

Anthologies and translations
Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique (Translation from Spanish) (1833)
The Waif (Anthology of other writers – 1845)
Poets and Poetry of Europe (Translations) (1844)
Dante's Divine Comedy (Translation) (1867)Further Information
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