Posted on Mar 24, 2020
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography - life, family, story, death, wife, young, son, book, old,...
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On March 24, 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, died at the age of 75. From the article:
"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography - life, family, story, death, wife, young, son, book, old, information, born
Born: February 27, 1807
Portland, Maine
Died: March 24, 1882
Cambridge, Massachusetts
American poet
The sentimental (appealing to the emotions) poems of the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made him an extremely popular author at home and in other countries in the nineteenth century.
Early life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, into an established New England family. As the son of a prominent lawyer, Henry was expected to have a similar profession as an adult. He attended Portland Academy and then Bowdoin College, in Maine, graduating in 1825. He was an excellent student whose skill in learning foreign languages led the trustees (persons appointed to administer the affairs of an institution) at Bowdoin (of which his father was one) to offer the young graduate a professorship of modern languages. He prepared himself further with study abroad (in Europe), at his own expense, before undertaking his duties. When he started his new position he had to create his own textbooks, because the study of modern languages was such a new field.
Young writer
During Longfellow's three years in Europe his lifelong harmony with Old World (European) civilization was firmly established. He returned home in 1829 and two years later married Mary Storer Potter. In 1833 he published Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea, a collection of picturesque (forming a pleasing picture) travel essays modeled after Washington Irving's (1783–1859) Sketch Book.
In 1834 Longfellow accepted a professorship at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not start his new job until 1837, after he had completed a tour of European and Scandinavian (northern European) countries. During this trip his wife died. While staying at Heidelberg, Germany, he came under the spell of the works of the German romantic poet Novalis (1772–1801). Novalis's moody, mystical (pertaining to a spiritual event) nocturnalism (pertaining to the night) struck a responsive chord in the grieving Longfellow.
In 1839 Longfellow published the sentimental prose romance Hyperion and his first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night. In Hyperion he rather indiscreetly (lacking sound judgment) told the story of his courtship of Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his wife's death. They were married in 1843. Her father, a wealthy Boston, Massachusetts, merchant, gave them
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Craigie House as a wedding present. This house became a famous visiting place for Longfellow's admirers. It is now called Longfellow House and is a national historic site. It holds most of the original furnishings from Longfellow's time, including his personal library of over ten thousand books.
Early poetry
Longfellow's poem "Hymn to the Night," in Voices of the Night, conveys the poet's debt to Novalis and his romantic kinship with the "calm, majestic presence of the Night." However, "A Psalm of Life," one of the best-known poems from this first volume, reflects the influence of the famed German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). His forceful philosophy suggested to Longfellow the direction of his hymn to action: "Life is real! Life is earnest! / Be not like dumb, driven cattle! / Be a hero in the strife." Voices of the Night was well received, and within a few years forty-three thousand copies had been sold. Longfellow's audience as a popular writer was assured.
Longfellow's next volume, Ballads and Other Poems (1842), contained two strong narrative poems, "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Skeleton in Armor," as well as the sentimental verses "Maidenhood" and "The Rainy Day" ("Into each life some rain must fall, / Some days must be dark and dreary") and the moralizing (explaining in the sense of right and wrong) poem "The Village Blacksmith."
After a trip to Europe in 1842 Longfellow published Poems on Slavery (1842) and The Spanish Student: A Play in Three Acts (1843). In 1845 two volumes of poetry appeared: the anthology (a series of chosen literary pieces) The Waif, to which Longfellow contributed the poem "The Day Is Done"; and The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems. Several poems in this second collection reflect Longfellow's deep attachment to the traditions of European culture. In addition, this volume contained the popular "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "The Arrow and the Song," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "The Bridge," and one of his best sonnets (traditional, fourteen-line poems), "Mezzo Cammin."
Epic poems
Longfellow wrote several epic poems. An epic poem is a long poem that tells a story, typically about a hero, and centers on uncommon achievements and events. He achieved a national reputation with the publication of Evangeline (1847), a highly sentimental narrative poem on the expulsion (driving out) of the French from Acadia. He wrote Evangeline in dactylic hexameters. Dactyls are poetic feet of three syllables, with the first syllable long or accented and the others short or unaccented. Hexameters are verses having six poetic feet. The book was enthusiastically received.
Longfellow next released the unimaginative romantic novel Kavanagh (1849) and By the Seaside and the Fireside (1850), which contained the very popular nationalistic (designed to arouse pride in one's country) poem "The Building of the Ship": "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! / Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!"
In 1854 Longfellow resigned his Harvard professorship to devote himself to his writing career. A year later he published The Song of Hiawatha, a narrative epic poem on the Native American. For this work Longfellow drew on Henry Schoolcraft's books on Native Americans. He wrote in trochees or poetic feet of two syllables, the first long or accented and the second short or unaccented. In short order, he repeated the success of Hiawatha with The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).
Major projects in later years
Following the tragic death of Longfellow's second wife in a fire in their home in 1861, he busied himself with the Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), in which various speakers, sitting around a fireplace, narrate stories. Other tales appeared in 1872 and 1873. Longfellow also translated poetry from eighteen languages. His most significant translation, published in 1867, was of a long poem by the medieval writer Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) called the Divine Comedy.
In the last phase of Longfellow's long career, he worked on another major project, The Christus: A Mystery. Completed in 1872, this work was concerned with "various aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages." The work came in three parts. An earlier work, The Golden Legend (1851), formed part II; part III, The New England Tragedies (1868), dealt with Puritan (a religious group in New England that stressed a strict moral code) themes; and, finally, part I, The Divine Tragedy (1871), concerned the life of Jesus Christ.
Several more volumes of Longfellow's verse were issued before his death on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After his death, he became the first American whose bust (sculpture of one's head) was placed in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, England.
To the modern reader, Longfellow's sentimental and optimistic poetry often sounds old-fashioned. He used his wide knowledge of the literature of other countries as a source for both the form and content of many of his poems. Several of his poems are set in other countries including Italy, Spain, France, and Norway. It should be remembered that Longfellow wrote for the common man. In his elegant and clear style he presented popular American values, such as the family circle and heroism."
"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography - life, family, story, death, wife, young, son, book, old, information, born
Born: February 27, 1807
Portland, Maine
Died: March 24, 1882
Cambridge, Massachusetts
American poet
The sentimental (appealing to the emotions) poems of the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made him an extremely popular author at home and in other countries in the nineteenth century.
Early life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on February 27, 1807, into an established New England family. As the son of a prominent lawyer, Henry was expected to have a similar profession as an adult. He attended Portland Academy and then Bowdoin College, in Maine, graduating in 1825. He was an excellent student whose skill in learning foreign languages led the trustees (persons appointed to administer the affairs of an institution) at Bowdoin (of which his father was one) to offer the young graduate a professorship of modern languages. He prepared himself further with study abroad (in Europe), at his own expense, before undertaking his duties. When he started his new position he had to create his own textbooks, because the study of modern languages was such a new field.
Young writer
During Longfellow's three years in Europe his lifelong harmony with Old World (European) civilization was firmly established. He returned home in 1829 and two years later married Mary Storer Potter. In 1833 he published Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea, a collection of picturesque (forming a pleasing picture) travel essays modeled after Washington Irving's (1783–1859) Sketch Book.
In 1834 Longfellow accepted a professorship at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not start his new job until 1837, after he had completed a tour of European and Scandinavian (northern European) countries. During this trip his wife died. While staying at Heidelberg, Germany, he came under the spell of the works of the German romantic poet Novalis (1772–1801). Novalis's moody, mystical (pertaining to a spiritual event) nocturnalism (pertaining to the night) struck a responsive chord in the grieving Longfellow.
In 1839 Longfellow published the sentimental prose romance Hyperion and his first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night. In Hyperion he rather indiscreetly (lacking sound judgment) told the story of his courtship of Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his wife's death. They were married in 1843. Her father, a wealthy Boston, Massachusetts, merchant, gave them
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Craigie House as a wedding present. This house became a famous visiting place for Longfellow's admirers. It is now called Longfellow House and is a national historic site. It holds most of the original furnishings from Longfellow's time, including his personal library of over ten thousand books.
Early poetry
Longfellow's poem "Hymn to the Night," in Voices of the Night, conveys the poet's debt to Novalis and his romantic kinship with the "calm, majestic presence of the Night." However, "A Psalm of Life," one of the best-known poems from this first volume, reflects the influence of the famed German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). His forceful philosophy suggested to Longfellow the direction of his hymn to action: "Life is real! Life is earnest! / Be not like dumb, driven cattle! / Be a hero in the strife." Voices of the Night was well received, and within a few years forty-three thousand copies had been sold. Longfellow's audience as a popular writer was assured.
Longfellow's next volume, Ballads and Other Poems (1842), contained two strong narrative poems, "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and "The Skeleton in Armor," as well as the sentimental verses "Maidenhood" and "The Rainy Day" ("Into each life some rain must fall, / Some days must be dark and dreary") and the moralizing (explaining in the sense of right and wrong) poem "The Village Blacksmith."
After a trip to Europe in 1842 Longfellow published Poems on Slavery (1842) and The Spanish Student: A Play in Three Acts (1843). In 1845 two volumes of poetry appeared: the anthology (a series of chosen literary pieces) The Waif, to which Longfellow contributed the poem "The Day Is Done"; and The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems. Several poems in this second collection reflect Longfellow's deep attachment to the traditions of European culture. In addition, this volume contained the popular "The Old Clock on the Stairs," "The Arrow and the Song," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "The Bridge," and one of his best sonnets (traditional, fourteen-line poems), "Mezzo Cammin."
Epic poems
Longfellow wrote several epic poems. An epic poem is a long poem that tells a story, typically about a hero, and centers on uncommon achievements and events. He achieved a national reputation with the publication of Evangeline (1847), a highly sentimental narrative poem on the expulsion (driving out) of the French from Acadia. He wrote Evangeline in dactylic hexameters. Dactyls are poetic feet of three syllables, with the first syllable long or accented and the others short or unaccented. Hexameters are verses having six poetic feet. The book was enthusiastically received.
Longfellow next released the unimaginative romantic novel Kavanagh (1849) and By the Seaside and the Fireside (1850), which contained the very popular nationalistic (designed to arouse pride in one's country) poem "The Building of the Ship": "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! / Sail on, O UNION, strong and great!"
In 1854 Longfellow resigned his Harvard professorship to devote himself to his writing career. A year later he published The Song of Hiawatha, a narrative epic poem on the Native American. For this work Longfellow drew on Henry Schoolcraft's books on Native Americans. He wrote in trochees or poetic feet of two syllables, the first long or accented and the second short or unaccented. In short order, he repeated the success of Hiawatha with The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).
Major projects in later years
Following the tragic death of Longfellow's second wife in a fire in their home in 1861, he busied himself with the Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), in which various speakers, sitting around a fireplace, narrate stories. Other tales appeared in 1872 and 1873. Longfellow also translated poetry from eighteen languages. His most significant translation, published in 1867, was of a long poem by the medieval writer Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) called the Divine Comedy.
In the last phase of Longfellow's long career, he worked on another major project, The Christus: A Mystery. Completed in 1872, this work was concerned with "various aspects of Christendom in the Apostolic, Middle, and Modern Ages." The work came in three parts. An earlier work, The Golden Legend (1851), formed part II; part III, The New England Tragedies (1868), dealt with Puritan (a religious group in New England that stressed a strict moral code) themes; and, finally, part I, The Divine Tragedy (1871), concerned the life of Jesus Christ.
Several more volumes of Longfellow's verse were issued before his death on March 24, 1882, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After his death, he became the first American whose bust (sculpture of one's head) was placed in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, England.
To the modern reader, Longfellow's sentimental and optimistic poetry often sounds old-fashioned. He used his wide knowledge of the literature of other countries as a source for both the form and content of many of his poems. Several of his poems are set in other countries including Italy, Spain, France, and Norway. It should be remembered that Longfellow wrote for the common man. In his elegant and clear style he presented popular American values, such as the family circle and heroism."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography - life, family, story, death, wife, young, son, book, old,...
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Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life
Charles C. Calhoun shows how the young poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow blended the Federalist politics and Unitarianism of his parents' generation with the G...
Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on March 24, 1882 American poet and educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died at the age of 75.
He was a wonderful poet who "was one of the Fireside Poets from New England."
Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life
Charles C. Calhoun shows how the young poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow blended the Federalist politics and Unitarianism of his parents' generation with the German romanticism he discovered on his travels. The result was distinctive American poetry, traditional in form, but nationalistic in sentiment. Longfellow's Paul Revere, Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, and the Village Blacksmith became American icons. And in his masterpiece, Evangeline, Longfellow invented the foundational myth of Acadian and Cajun ethnic identity.
Calhoun's Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life is a Victorian family saga. As a young man from the provinces, Longfellow gained international celebrity and great wealth; yet his life was afflicted by chronic melancholy, by the tragic deaths of two beloved wives, by a spendthrift son, and by a self-destructive brother.
A procession of vivid characters walks through the pages of Calhoun's book, from the poet's Revolutionary War grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, to his friends and acquaintances, including Hawthorne, Emerson, Charles Sumner, Dickens, Carlyle, Fanny Butler, Queen Victoria, and Oscar Wilde."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7QsL_7SEcQ
Images
1. Mary Storer Potter became Longfellow's first wife in 1831 and she died four years later. After a 7-year courtship Longfellow married Francis Appleton in 1843.
2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, His Life, His Works, His Friendships, by George Lowell Austin, 1883.
3. Painting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1842-1846. by Charles Loring Elliott Oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum
4. 4. Fanny Longfellow reading to Charley and Erny, c. 1849 Daguerrotype
Background from [https://poets.org/poet/henry-wadsworth-longfellow]
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882 , Portland , ME
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine—then still part of Massachusetts—on February 27, 1807, the second son in a family of eight children. His mother, Zilpah Wadsworth, was the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was a prominent Portland lawyer and later a member of Congress.
After graduating from Bowdoin College, Longfellow studied modern languages in Europe for three years, then returned to Bowdoin to teach them. In 1831 he married Mary Storer Potter of Portland, a former classmate, and soon published his first book, a description of his travels called Outre Mer (“Overseas”). But in November 1835, during a second trip to Europe, Longfellow’s life was shaken when his wife died during a miscarriage. The young teacher spent a grief-stricken year in Germany and Switzerland.
Longfellow took a position at Harvard in 1836. Three years later, at the age of thirty-two, he published his first collection of poems, Voices of the Night, followed in 1841 by Ballads and Other Poems. Many of these poems (“A Psalm of Life," for example) showed people triumphing over adversity, and in a struggling young nation that theme was inspiring. Both books were very popular, but Longfellow’s growing duties as a professor left him little time to write more. In addition, Frances Appleton, a young woman from Boston, had refused his proposal of marriage.
Frances finally accepted his proposal the following spring, ushering in the happiest eighteen years of Longfellow’s life. The couple had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood, and the marriage gave him new confidence. In 1847, he published Evangeline, a book-length poem about what would now be called “ethnic cleansing.” The poem takes place as the British drive the French from Nova Scotia, and two lovers are parted, only to find each other years later when the man is about to die.
In 1854, Longfellow decided to quit teaching to devote all his time to poetry. He published Hiawatha, a long poem about Native American life, and The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems. Both books were immensely successful, but Longfellow was now preoccupied with national events. With the country moving toward civil war, he wrote "Paul Revere’s Ride," a call for courage in the coming conflict.
A few months after the war began in 1861, Frances Longfellow was sealing an envelope with wax when her dress caught fire. Despite her husband’s desperate attempts to save her, she died the next day. Profoundly saddened, Longfellow published nothing for the next two years. He found comfort in his family and in reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. (Later, he produced its first American translation.) Tales of a Wayside Inn, largely written before his wife’s death, was published in 1863.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the poet was fifty-eight. His most important work was finished, but his fame kept growing. In London alone, twenty-four different companies were publishing his work. His poems were popular throughout the English-speaking world, and they were widely translated, making him the most famous American of his day. His admirers included Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, and Charles Baudelaire.
From 1866 to 1880, Longfellow published seven more books of poetry, and his seventy-fifth birthday in 1882 was celebrated across the country. But his health was failing, and he died the following month, on March 24. When Walt Whitman heard of the poet’s death, he wrote that, while Longfellow’s work “brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows," he was the sort of bard most needed in a materialistic age: “He comes as the poet of melancholy, courtesy, deference—poet of all sympathetic gentleness—and universal poet of women and young people. I should have to think long if I were ask’d to name the man who has done more and in more valuable directions, for America.”
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Aftermath (1873)
Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Evangeline (1847)
Flower-de-Luce (1867)
Household Poems (1863)
Keramos and Other Poems (1878)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
The Golden Legend (1851)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
The Seaside and Fireside (1849)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Three Books of Song (1872)
Ultima Thule (1880)
Voices of the Night (1839)
Prose
The New England Tragedies (1868)
Drama
The Spanish Student (1843)
Essays
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimmage Beyond the Sea (1835)
Fiction
Hyperion: A Romance (1839)
Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)
Poetry in Translation
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1867)""
"Heres a virtual movie of the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reading his best known patriotic poem "Paul Revere's Ride"."Paul Revere's Ride" (1860) is a poem by an American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April 18, 1775.Paul Revere (January 1, 1735 [O.S. December 21, 1734] -- May 10, 1818)[N 1] was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride.
Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston silversmith, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as an officer in the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.
The poem is spoken by the landlord of the Wayside Inn and tells a partly fictionalized story of Paul Revere. In the poem, Revere tells a friend to prepare signal lanterns in the Old North Church to inform him if the British will attack by land or sea. He would await the signal across the river in Charlestown and be ready to spread the alarm throughout Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The unnamed friend climbs up the steeple and soon sets up two signal lanterns, informing Revere that the British are coming by sea. Revere rides his horse through Medford, Lexington, and Concord to warn the patriots.
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He was a wonderful poet who "was one of the Fireside Poets from New England."
Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life
Charles C. Calhoun shows how the young poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow blended the Federalist politics and Unitarianism of his parents' generation with the German romanticism he discovered on his travels. The result was distinctive American poetry, traditional in form, but nationalistic in sentiment. Longfellow's Paul Revere, Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, and the Village Blacksmith became American icons. And in his masterpiece, Evangeline, Longfellow invented the foundational myth of Acadian and Cajun ethnic identity.
Calhoun's Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life is a Victorian family saga. As a young man from the provinces, Longfellow gained international celebrity and great wealth; yet his life was afflicted by chronic melancholy, by the tragic deaths of two beloved wives, by a spendthrift son, and by a self-destructive brother.
A procession of vivid characters walks through the pages of Calhoun's book, from the poet's Revolutionary War grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, to his friends and acquaintances, including Hawthorne, Emerson, Charles Sumner, Dickens, Carlyle, Fanny Butler, Queen Victoria, and Oscar Wilde."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7QsL_7SEcQ
Images
1. Mary Storer Potter became Longfellow's first wife in 1831 and she died four years later. After a 7-year courtship Longfellow married Francis Appleton in 1843.
2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, His Life, His Works, His Friendships, by George Lowell Austin, 1883.
3. Painting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1842-1846. by Charles Loring Elliott Oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum
4. 4. Fanny Longfellow reading to Charley and Erny, c. 1849 Daguerrotype
Background from [https://poets.org/poet/henry-wadsworth-longfellow]
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882 , Portland , ME
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine—then still part of Massachusetts—on February 27, 1807, the second son in a family of eight children. His mother, Zilpah Wadsworth, was the daughter of a Revolutionary War hero. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was a prominent Portland lawyer and later a member of Congress.
After graduating from Bowdoin College, Longfellow studied modern languages in Europe for three years, then returned to Bowdoin to teach them. In 1831 he married Mary Storer Potter of Portland, a former classmate, and soon published his first book, a description of his travels called Outre Mer (“Overseas”). But in November 1835, during a second trip to Europe, Longfellow’s life was shaken when his wife died during a miscarriage. The young teacher spent a grief-stricken year in Germany and Switzerland.
Longfellow took a position at Harvard in 1836. Three years later, at the age of thirty-two, he published his first collection of poems, Voices of the Night, followed in 1841 by Ballads and Other Poems. Many of these poems (“A Psalm of Life," for example) showed people triumphing over adversity, and in a struggling young nation that theme was inspiring. Both books were very popular, but Longfellow’s growing duties as a professor left him little time to write more. In addition, Frances Appleton, a young woman from Boston, had refused his proposal of marriage.
Frances finally accepted his proposal the following spring, ushering in the happiest eighteen years of Longfellow’s life. The couple had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood, and the marriage gave him new confidence. In 1847, he published Evangeline, a book-length poem about what would now be called “ethnic cleansing.” The poem takes place as the British drive the French from Nova Scotia, and two lovers are parted, only to find each other years later when the man is about to die.
In 1854, Longfellow decided to quit teaching to devote all his time to poetry. He published Hiawatha, a long poem about Native American life, and The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems. Both books were immensely successful, but Longfellow was now preoccupied with national events. With the country moving toward civil war, he wrote "Paul Revere’s Ride," a call for courage in the coming conflict.
A few months after the war began in 1861, Frances Longfellow was sealing an envelope with wax when her dress caught fire. Despite her husband’s desperate attempts to save her, she died the next day. Profoundly saddened, Longfellow published nothing for the next two years. He found comfort in his family and in reading Dante’s Divine Comedy. (Later, he produced its first American translation.) Tales of a Wayside Inn, largely written before his wife’s death, was published in 1863.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the poet was fifty-eight. His most important work was finished, but his fame kept growing. In London alone, twenty-four different companies were publishing his work. His poems were popular throughout the English-speaking world, and they were widely translated, making him the most famous American of his day. His admirers included Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, and Charles Baudelaire.
From 1866 to 1880, Longfellow published seven more books of poetry, and his seventy-fifth birthday in 1882 was celebrated across the country. But his health was failing, and he died the following month, on March 24. When Walt Whitman heard of the poet’s death, he wrote that, while Longfellow’s work “brings nothing offensive or new, does not deal hard blows," he was the sort of bard most needed in a materialistic age: “He comes as the poet of melancholy, courtesy, deference—poet of all sympathetic gentleness—and universal poet of women and young people. I should have to think long if I were ask’d to name the man who has done more and in more valuable directions, for America.”
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Aftermath (1873)
Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
Christus: A Mystery (1872)
Evangeline (1847)
Flower-de-Luce (1867)
Household Poems (1863)
Keramos and Other Poems (1878)
Poems on Slavery (1842)
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1845)
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
The Golden Legend (1851)
The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)
The Seaside and Fireside (1849)
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Three Books of Song (1872)
Ultima Thule (1880)
Voices of the Night (1839)
Prose
The New England Tragedies (1868)
Drama
The Spanish Student (1843)
Essays
Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimmage Beyond the Sea (1835)
Fiction
Hyperion: A Romance (1839)
Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)
Poetry in Translation
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1867)""
"Heres a virtual movie of the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reading his best known patriotic poem "Paul Revere's Ride"."Paul Revere's Ride" (1860) is a poem by an American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April 18, 1775.Paul Revere (January 1, 1735 [O.S. December 21, 1734] -- May 10, 1818)[N 1] was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride.
Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston silversmith, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as an officer in the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.
The poem is spoken by the landlord of the Wayside Inn and tells a partly fictionalized story of Paul Revere. In the poem, Revere tells a friend to prepare signal lanterns in the Old North Church to inform him if the British will attack by land or sea. He would await the signal across the river in Charlestown and be ready to spread the alarm throughout Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The unnamed friend climbs up the steeple and soon sets up two signal lanterns, informing Revere that the British are coming by sea. Revere rides his horse through Medford, Lexington, and Concord to warn the patriots.
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LTC Stephen F.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Paul Revere's Ride" Poem animation
Heres a virtual movie of the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reading his best known patriotic poem "Paul Revere's Ride"."Paul Revere's Ride" (...
Images:
1. A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
2. Fanny Appleton by G.P.A. Healy, 1834
3. 2007 Literary Arts - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 39 Cent US Postage Stamp Scott #4124
4. 1835 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church and climbing its tower on April 5, 1860. He began writing the poem the next day. It was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It was later published in Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn as "The Landlord's Tale" in 1863. The poem served as the first in a series of 22 narratives bundled as a collection, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and was published in three installments over 10 years.
Longfellow's family had a connection to the historical Paul Revere. His maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, was Revere's commander on the Penobscot Expedition,"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-6dhICCzcw
FYI SFC John LichSgt Jackie JuliusSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Randy Zimmerman SPC Diana D. SSG Diane R. LTC Hillary Luton Maj Kim Patterson Sgt Kelli Mays SFC (Join to see) CWO3 Dennis M. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG William Jones ] SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO3 Bob McCord Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty HoganCynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates
1. A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.
2. Fanny Appleton by G.P.A. Healy, 1834
3. 2007 Literary Arts - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 39 Cent US Postage Stamp Scott #4124
4. 1835 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church and climbing its tower on April 5, 1860. He began writing the poem the next day. It was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It was later published in Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn as "The Landlord's Tale" in 1863. The poem served as the first in a series of 22 narratives bundled as a collection, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and was published in three installments over 10 years.
Longfellow's family had a connection to the historical Paul Revere. His maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, was Revere's commander on the Penobscot Expedition,"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-6dhICCzcw
FYI SFC John LichSgt Jackie JuliusSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Randy Zimmerman SPC Diana D. SSG Diane R. LTC Hillary Luton Maj Kim Patterson Sgt Kelli Mays SFC (Join to see) CWO3 Dennis M. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG William Jones ] SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO3 Bob McCord Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty HoganCynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates
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LTC Stephen F.
The life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a commanding figure in the cultural life of nineteenth-century America. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807, he became a national...
The life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a commanding figure in the cultural life of nineteenth-century America. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807, he became a national literary figure by the 1850s, and a world- famous personality by the time of his death in 1882.
He was a traveler, a linguist, and a romantic who identified with the great traditions of European literature and thought. At the same time, he was rooted in American life and history, which charged his imagination with untried themes and made him ambitious for success."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKJom0yKnQ
Images:
1. Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
2. Mary and Fanny Appleton by Jean Baptiste Isabey, 1837
3. 1c Green Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1940 U.S. Stamps Sc.# 864.
FYI CPT Paul Whitmer1SG Steven ImermanSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett Jr PO2 Roger Lafarlette]1stsgt Glenn BrackinSSG Donald H "Don" Bates SPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ BoltonSFC Terry Wilcox SPC Margaret Higgins PO3 Phyllis Maynard PO3 Bob McCord
"Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a commanding figure in the cultural life of nineteenth-century America. Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807, he became a national literary figure by the 1850s, and a world- famous personality by the time of his death in 1882.
He was a traveler, a linguist, and a romantic who identified with the great traditions of European literature and thought. At the same time, he was rooted in American life and history, which charged his imagination with untried themes and made him ambitious for success."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKJom0yKnQ
Images:
1. Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
2. Mary and Fanny Appleton by Jean Baptiste Isabey, 1837
3. 1c Green Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1940 U.S. Stamps Sc.# 864.
FYI CPT Paul Whitmer1SG Steven ImermanSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett Jr PO2 Roger Lafarlette]1stsgt Glenn BrackinSSG Donald H "Don" Bates SPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ BoltonSFC Terry Wilcox SPC Margaret Higgins PO3 Phyllis Maynard PO3 Bob McCord
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SPC Margaret Higgins
LTC Stephen F. - Steve, my Dear Brother-in-CHRIST: Thank you beyond compare; for mentioning my name! GOD bless you; Steve; and, your Darling wife.
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