Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator 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 Fireside Poets. SONY VAIO PCG-6Q1L CPU Fan Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then a part of Massachusetts. He 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 (1841). SONY VAIO VGN-C2S Series Laptop Keyboard Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a former headquarters ofGeorge Washington. His first wife Mary Potter died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife Frances Appleton died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress caught fire. SAMSUNG N150 Laptop Keyboard After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on his translation. He died in 1882. Longfellow wrote predominantly lyric poems, known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. HP Pavilion DV9243EA Laptop Keyboard 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. Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine,[1]then a district of Massachusetts,[2] and he grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. FUJITSU Lifebook E8110 Laptop Keyboard His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress.[3] He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli.[4] Young Longfellow was the second of eight children;[5] Lenovo 3000 Y500 Laptop Keyboard his siblings were Stephen (1805), Elizabeth (1808), Anne (1810), Alexander (1814), Mary (1816), Ellen (1818), and Samuel (1819). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was enrolled in a dame school at the age of 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.[6] HP Pavilion DV8310CA Laptop Keyboard His mother encouraged his enthusiasm for reading and learning, introducing him to Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote.[7] He printed his first poem — a patriotic and historical four-stanza poem called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" — in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820.[8] He stayed at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen.  Lenovo 0A62039 Laptop Keyboard 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.[6] His grandfather was a founder of the college[9] and his father was a trustee.DELL Vostro 3450 Laptop Keyboard There, Longfellow met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would later become his lifelong friend.[10] He boarded with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor of what is now Maine Hall in 1823.[11] He joined the Peucinian Society, a group of students withFederalist leanings.[12] In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations:  TOSHIBA Mini NB 505-SP0160 Laptop Keyboard I will not 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 am 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.[13]  Lenovo 3000 G530 4151 Laptop Keyboard He pursued his literary goals by submitting poetry and prose to various newspapers and magazines, partly due to encouragement from a professor named Thomas CogswellUpham.[14] Between January 1824 and his graduation in 1825, he had published nearly 40 minor poems.[15] About 24 of them appeared in the short-lived Boston periodical The United States Literary Gazette.[12SAMSUNG N150 Laptop Keyboard ] When Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin, he was ranked fourth in the class, and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[16] He gave the student commencement address.[14] After graduating in 1825, he was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. The story, possibly apocryphal, is that an influential trustee, HP G61-400SP Laptop Keyboard Benjamin Orr, had been so impressed by Longfellow's translation of Horace that he was hired under the condition that he travel to Europe to study French, Spanish, and Italian.[17] Whatever the motivation, he began his tour of Europe in May 1826 aboard the ship Cadmus.[18] His time abroad would last three years and cost his father $2,604.24.[19] COMPAQ Presario CQ40-133TU Laptop Keyboard He traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, back to France, then England before returning to the United States in mid-August 1829.[20] While overseas, he learned French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, mostly without formal instruction.[21] In Madrid, he spent time withWashington Irving and was particularly impressed by the author's work ethic.[22] HP 317443-001 Laptop Keyboard Irving encouraged the young Longfellow to pursue writing.[23] While in Spain, Longfellow was saddened to learn that 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".  HP HDX18-1200 CTO Laptop Keyboard 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.[25] During his years teaching at the college, he translated textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish;[26] his first published book was in 1833, a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique.[27]  DELL Vostro 1014 Laptop Keyboard He also published a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, first published in serial form before a book edition was released in 1835.[26] Shortly after the book's publication, Longfellow attempted to join the literary circle in New York and asked George Pope Morris for an editorial role at one of Morris's publications. SONY Vaio PCG-K215S Laptop Keyboard Longfellow considered moving to New York after New York Universityconsidered offering him a newly created professorship of modern languages, though there would be no salary. The professorship was not created and Longfellow agreed to continue teaching at Bowdoin.[28] It may have been joyless work. He wrote, "I hate the sight of pen, ink, and paper... TOSHIBA Mini NB 300 Series Laptop Keyboard I do not believe that I was born for such a lot. I have aimed higher than this".[29] On September 14, 1831, Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, a childhood friend from Portland.[30] The couple settled in Brunswick, though the two were not happy there.[31] Longfellow published several nonfiction and fiction prose pieces inspired by Irving, including "The Indian Summer" and "The Bald Eagle" in 1833.[32TOSHIBA K000098730 Laptop Keyboard In December 1834, Longfellow received a letter from Josiah Quincy III, president of Harvard College, offering him the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad.[33] There, he further studied German as well as Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, and Icelandic.[34] GATEWAY NV-54 Laptop Keyboard In October 1835, during the trip, his wife Mary had a miscarriage about six months into her pregnancy.[35] She did not 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.[36] Lenovo 3000 G530 4151 Laptop Keyboard He was deeply saddened by her death, writing "One thought occupies me night and day... She is dead — She is dead! All day I am weary and sad".[37] Three years later, he was inspired to write the poem "Footsteps of Angels" about her. Several years later, he wrote the poem "Mezzo Cammin" expressed his personal struggles in his middle years.[38] SONY VAIO VGN-SZ750N/C Laptop Keyboard When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard. He was required to live in Cambridge to be close to the campus and rented rooms at the Craigie House in the spring of 1837,[39] now preserved as theLongfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. Lenovo 45N2106 Laptop Keyboard The home, built in 1759, had once been the headquarters of George Washington during the Siege of Boston beginning in July 1775.[40] Previous boarders also included Jared Sparks,Edward Everett, and Joseph Emerson Worcester.[41] Longfellow began publishing his poetry, including the collection Voices of the Night in 1839.[42] SAMSUNG R522 laptop keyboard The bulk of Voices of the Night, Longfellow's debut book of poetry, was translations though he also included nine original poems and seven poems he had written as a teenager.[43] Ballads and Other Poems was published shortly thereafter in 1841[44] and included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly popular.[45]  Lenovo 45N2141 laptop keyboard Longfellow also became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. Members included Cornelius Conway Felton, George StillmanHillard, and Charles Sumner, the latter of whom would become Longfellow's closest friend over the next 30 years.[46] HP Pavilion dv6-2133ee laptop keyboard As a professor, Longfellow was well liked, though he disliked being "constantly a playmate for boys" rather than "stretching out and grappling with men's minds."[47] Longfellow met Boston industrialist Nathan Appleton and his family, including his son Thomas Gold Appleton, in the town ofThun, Switzerland. HP COMPAQ NX6320 laptop keyboard There, he began courting Appleton's daughter, Frances "Fanny" Appleton. At first, the independent-minded Appleton was not interested in marriage but Longfellow was determined.[48] In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: "[V]ictory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion".[49] ASUS X85S laptop keyboard His friend George StillmanHillard encouraged Longfellow in the pursuit: "I delight to see you keeping up so stout a heart for the resolve to conquer is half the battle in love as well as war".[50] During the courtship, Longfellow frequently walked from Cambridge to the Appleton home in Beacon Hill in Boston by crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was replaced in 1906 by a new bridge which was later renamed the Longfellow Bridge. SONY VAIO VGN-N31Z/W laptop keyboard In late 1839, Longfellow published Hyperion, a book in prose inspired by his trips abroad[49] and his unsuccessful courtship of Fanny Appleton.[51] Amidst this, Longfellow fell into "periods of neurotic depression with moments of panic" and took a six-month leave of absence from Harvard to attend a health spa in the former Marienberg Benedictine Convent at Boppard in Germany.[51] ASUS X85S laptop keyboard After returning, Longfellow published a play in 1842, The Spanish Student, reflecting his memories from his time in Spain in the 1820s.[52] 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,  SONY VAIO VGN-N31Z/W laptop keyboard 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.[53] A small collection, Poems on Slavery, was published in 1842 as Longfellow's first public support of abolitionism. However, as Longfellow himself wrote, the poems were "so mild that even a Slaveholder might read them without losing his appetite for breakfast".[5ASUS X53S laptop keyboard 4] A critic for The Dial agreed, calling it "the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the topic would warrant a deeper tone".[55] The New England Anti-Slavery Association, however, was satisfied with the collection enough to reprint it for further distribution.[56]  LENOVO AEQA1STU010 laptop keyboard On May 10, 1843, after seven years, Longfellow received a letter from Fanny Appleton agreeing to marry him and, too restless to take a carriage, walked 90 minutes to meet her at her house.[57] They were soon married. Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House as a wedding present to the pair. Longfellow lived there for the rest of his life.[58 Lenovo 3000 G530 4151 laptop keyboard ] His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from Longfellow's only love poem, the sonnet "The Evening Star",[59] which he wrote in October 1845: "O my beloved, my sweetHesperus! My morning and my evening star of love!" He once attended a ball without her and noted, "The lights seemed dimmer, the music sadder, the flowers fewer, and the women less fair."[60] COMPAQ Presario CQ40-133TU laptop keyboard 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 writer Richard Henry Dana, Jr., author of Two Years Before the Mast.[61] Lenovo 3000 Y500 laptop keyboard 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.[62] A few months later, on November 1, 1847, the poem Evangeline was published for the first time.[62] His literary income was increasing considerably: HP Mini 110-3519la laptop keyboard in 1840, he had made $219 from his work but the year 1850 brought him $1,900.[63] On June 14, 1853, Longfellow held a farewell dinner party at his Cambridge home for his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was preparing to move overseas.[64] In 1854, Longfellow retired from Harvard,[65] devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Harvard in 1859.[66] HP COMPAQ 486654-001 laptop keyboard On July 9, 1861,[67] 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.[68] Her dress suddenly caught fire, though it is unclear exactly how;[69] it may have been burning wax or a lighted candle that fell on her dress.[70] SONY VAIO VGN-C2S Series laptop keyboard Longfellow, awakened 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.[69] Over a half a century later, Longfellow's youngest daughter Annie explained the story differently, SONY VAIO VGN-CS17G/R laptop keyboard claiming that there had been no candle or wax but that the fire had started from a self-lighting match that had fallen on the floor.[61] In both versions of the story, however, Fanny was taken to her room to recover and a doctor was called. She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was administered ether. The next morning, July 10, 1861, she died shortly after 10 o'clock after requesting a cup of coffee.[ TOSHIBA Satellite L755-S5357 laptop keyboard 71] Longfellow, in trying to save her, had burned himself badly enough for him to be unable to attend her funeral.[72] His facial injuries led him to stop shaving, thereafter wearing the beard which became his trademark.[71] Devastated by her death, he never fully recovered and occasionally resorted to laudanum and ether to deal with it.[73SONY N860-7676-T101 laptop keyboard ] He worried he would go insane and begged "not to be sent to an asylum" and noted that he was "inwardly bleeding to death".[74] He expressed his grief in the sonnet "The Cross of Snow" (1879), which he wrote eighteen years later to commemorate her death:[38] Longfellow spent several years translating Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. DELL E141395 laptop keyboard To aid him in perfecting the translation and reviewing proofs, he invited friends to weekly meetings every Wednesday starting in 1864.[76] The "Dante Club", as it was called, regularly included William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton and other occasional guests.[77] HP 518965-001 laptop keyboard The full three-volume translation was published in the spring of 1867, though Longfellow would continue to revise it,[78] and went through four printings in its first year.[79] By 1868, Longfellow's annual income was over $48,000.[80] In 1874, Samuel Cutler Ward helped him sell the poem "The Hanging of the Crane" to the New York Ledger for $3,000; it was the highest price ever paid for a poem.Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 laptop keyboard During the 1860s, Longfellow supported abolitionism and especially hoped for reconciliation between the northern and southern states after the American Civil War. He wrote in his journal in 1878: "I have only one desire; and that is for harmony, and a frank and honest understanding between North and South".[82] LENOVO IdeaPad S10 20015 laptop keyboard Longfellow, despite his aversion to public speaking, accepted an offer from Joshua Chamberlain to speak at his fiftieth reunion at Bowdoin College; he read the poem "MorituriSalutamus" so quietly that few could hear him.[83] The next year, 1876, he declined an offer to be nominated for the Board of Overseers at Harvard "for reasons very conclusive to my own mind".[84]  DELL Inspiron N4050 laptop keyboard On August 22, 1879, a female admirer traveled 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 had died here. "Not yet", he replied.[85] In March 1882, Longfellow went to bed with severe stomach pain. HP Mini 1151NR laptop keyboard He endured the pain for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24, 1882.[86]He had been suffering from peritonitis.[87] At the time of his death, his estate was worth an estimated $356,320.[80] He is buried with both of his wives atMount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  SONY KFRMBA220A laptop keyboard His last few years were spent translating the poetry of Michelangelo; though Longfellow never considered it complete enough to be published during his lifetime, a posthumous edition was collected in 1883. Scholars generally regard the work as autobiographical, reflecting the translator as an aging artist facing his impending death.[88] HP Pavilion DV7-3078nr laptop keyboard Though much of his work is categorized as lyric poetry, Longfellow experimented with many forms, including hexameter andfree verse.[89] His published poetry shows great versatility, using anapestic and trochaic forms, blank verse, heroic couplets, ballads and sonnets.[90] Typically, Longfellow would carefully consider the subject of his poetic ideas for a long time before deciding on the right metrical form for it.[91Toshiba Satellite L550-20W CPU Fan ] Much of his work is recognized for its melody-like musicality.[92]As he says, "what a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen".[93] As a very private man, Longfellow did not often add autobiographical elements to his poetry. Two notable exceptions are dedicated to the death of members of his family. SONY Vaio VPC-EB3E1R/BQ CPU Fan "Resignation", written as a response to the death of his daughter Fanny in 1848, does not use first-person pronouns and is instead a generalized poem of mourning.[94] The death of his second wife Frances, as biographer Charles Calhoun wrote, deeply affected Longfellow personally but "seemed not to touch his poetry, at least directly".[9Dell Precision M4500 CPU Fan