Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, then part of the District of Maine, Massachusetts. He grew up in the Wadsworth-Longfellow House on Congress Street, the second of eight children in a family tied closely to New England history. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was a lawyer; his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, had been a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress. Through his family, Longfellow was descended from English colonists who settled in New England in the early 1600s, including Mayflower Pilgrims.

Longfellow’s love of books began early. He attended a dame school at age three and entered the private Portland Academy by age six, where he became known as a studious child and grew fluent in Latin. His mother encouraged his reading and introduced him to Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. At 13, he published his first poem, “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond,” in the Portland Gazette. In 1822, at 15, he entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became his lifelong friend. He graduated in 1825, ranked fourth in his class, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

After Bowdoin, Longfellow was offered a professorship in modern languages and spent three years in Europe preparing for the post. He traveled through France, Spain, Italy, Germany, France again, and England, learning French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, mostly without formal instruction. In Madrid, he spent time with Washington Irving and was impressed by Irving’s work habits; Irving encouraged him to keep writing. Longfellow later taught at Bowdoin, translated textbooks from French, Italian, and Spanish, and published his first book in 1833, a translation of poetry by the medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique.

Longfellow’s own writing soon brought him wide attention. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night in 1839 and Ballads and Other Poems in 1841. His original works include “Paul Revere’s Ride,” The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to complete a translation of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. He taught at Harvard College after his time at Bowdoin, then retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on writing. He spent the rest of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the house that had served as George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War.

His life was also marked by severe private losses. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after her dress caught fire and she suffered burns. After Frances’s death, Longfellow found poetry difficult for a time and turned much of his energy to translating works from foreign languages. These experiences did not remove him from public affection. In his day, he became the most popular American poet and found readers overseas as well.

Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musical quality, often telling stories drawn from mythology and legend. He belonged to the group known as the fireside poets of New England, writers whose poems were widely read in homes. Critics have faulted him for imitating European styles and for being too sentimental, yet the reach of his work came from plain strengths: memorable rhythm, narrative feeling, and subjects that readers could carry with them. Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, leaving poems and translations that remain closely tied to 19th-century American literary culture.