[24] He traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, back to France, then to England before returning to the United States in mid-August 1829. [29], 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". Request a transcript here. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 'Well! [37], 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. 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". Many, especially Torquemada and The Saga of King Olaf, were surprisingly violent. [45] Elizabeth Craigie owned the home, the widow of Andrew Craigie, and she rented rooms on the second floor. Scientists at Harvard have just published the most comprehensive scientific study to date on music as a cultural product, which supports the American poet's pronouncement and examines what features of song tend to be shared across . Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a 19th century educationist and poet from America, who penned some of the most memorable poems in the history of American literature. Some years after Longfellows death a violent reaction set in against his verse as critics dismissed his conventional high-minded sentiments and the gentle strain of Romanticism that he had made so popular. Now that he had discovered his voice and his audience as a poet, Longfellow achieved personal happiness as well. The famed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once penned the beautiful words, "Be still, sad heart! In 1839 he published Voices of the Night, which contained the poems Hymn to the Night, The Psalm of Life, and The Light of the Stars and achieved immediate popularity. To aid him in perfecting the translation and reviewing proofs, he invited friends to meetings every Wednesday starting in 1864. Restless and sorrowful, Longfellow then set out alone to travel through the Tyrol and Switzerland. While readily dismissing Edgar Allan Poes charges of plagiarism, they acknowledged that Longfellow lacked the originality evident in Whitman, Emerson, and even Poe. Despite some criticism of the Virgilian dactylic hexameter meter with which Longfellow experimented in Evangeline, the poem proved enormously successful. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Again, Longfellow coped with sorrow by plunging himself into literary workthis time of an intensely challenging sort. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 1385 likes. After falling in love with 17-year-old Frances Appleton, Longfellow returned to Heidelberg to escort Marys friend Clara Crowninshield home to the US. [134], Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day. He spent much of his summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm in Hiram, Maine. The volume In the Harbor, Ultima ThulePart 2 came out just after his death in 1882 and included his final composition, The Bells of San Blas (1882). UNIVE'RSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, AND COMPANY, CAMBRIDGE. He endured the pain for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24. She helps professionals and business owners speak with confidence - from stepping on stage to speaking on podcasts to showing up online and in the boardroom. Wisely improve the Present. Homesickness, however, prompted him to develop a proposal for a never published new-world sketchbook featuring New England settings and stories, rather than any literary account of European materials; The Wondrous Tale of a Little Man in Gosling Green, which appeared in the November 1, 1834 issue of the New Yorker, exemplified his intent for that projected volume. Analyze Longfellow's poetry and understand his . [143] He had difficulty coping with the death of his second wife. He was engaged in ambitious projects. [33] It may have been joyless work. [35] The couple settled in Brunswick, but the two were not happy there. Longfellow published in 1872 what he intended to be his masterpiece, Christus: A Mystery, a trilogy dealing with Christianity from its beginning. [82] By 1868, Longfellow's annual income was over $48,000. Returning to Maine in summer 1829, Longfellow as a young professor soon found himself immersed in the unpoetic routines of pedagogy. The familys domestic bliss, however, was about to be shattered. [dropcap letter="O"]n a fine September morning in 1822 the fast stagecoach from Portland to Brunswick was . [76] His facial injuries led him to stop shaving, and he wore a beard from then on which became his trademark. All were the children of his second wife, Fanny. Updates? In this essay, the author. Paul Revere's Ride, for example, was first published in 1860, a time of dread and fear of the oncoming storm. His travel sketches, Outre-Mer (1835), did not succeed. Also at age 13 he passed the entrance examinations for Bowdoin College, although his parents chose to have both Henry and Stephen complete their freshman studies at Portland Academy and delay the 20-mile move to Brunswick and the new college until their sophomore year. I have aimed higher than this". Haiku. "[115], The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States;[116] by 1874, he was earning $3,000 per poem. 4.33 avg rating 57 ratings. [75] Longfellow had burned himself while trying to save her, badly enough that he was unable to attend her funeral. Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow. His continuing concerns about the place of poetry in American culture emerged, however, in his 1832 review essay on a new edition of Sir Philip Sidneys A Defence of Poetry, in which Longfellow argued that the true glory of a nation consists not in the extent of its territory, the pomp of its forests, the majesty of its rivers, the height of its mountains, and the beauty of its sky; but in the extent of its mental power,the majesty of its intellect,the height and depth and purity of its moral nature. from. The Building of the Ship combines a tribute to the master builder who designed the ship with a love story linking the masters daughter to the fiery youth employed in its construction while making clear that the Union stood allegorically for the United States on the eve of secession. A monument featuring a bas relief of Miles Standish, Sadalphon, the Village Blacksmith, the Spanish Student, Evangeline, and Hiawatha, characters from Longfellows works, was dedicated in October 1914. I'm gwine." On July 9, 1861, Fanny Longfellow suffered fatal burns when the candle she was using to seal packets of her daughters curls ignited her dress; she died the next day. [58] 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". A Psalm of Life (1838) expresses both the confusion of his feelings in that time of discouragement and his resolve not to succumb to mournful passivity. [40] She did not recover and died after several weeks of illness at the age of 22 on November 29, 1835. . [18], After graduating in 1825, Longfellow was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. Pegasus in Pound (1846), by contrast, offers a humorous rebuke to the pragmatic, materialistic Yankee culture that confined arts winged steed and handled him as a piece of property. Stanzas to a Lady on Leaving England 13. [9] His grandfather was a founder of the college[12] and his father was a trustee. On the advice of George Ticknor of Harvard, Longfellow decided to add German to French, Spanish, and Italian. In 1842 his Ballads and Other Poems, containing such favourites as The Wreck of the Hesperus and The Village Blacksmith, swept the nation. There were still poems drawn from Longfellows travels and his readings in European literatures, but the most celebrated poem of the book was among his most patriotic pieces. In 1854 he resigned his Harvard professorshippartly because of his eyesight, partly for relief from academic pressures and contention with the university corporation on behalf of his department, but probably most of all because he found he could support his household on the strength of his poetry and desired more opportunity for writing. Henry W. Longfellow, photographed by Mathew Brady, 1859. American poet and educator. Longfellows long poem The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) was another great popular success. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807, the second child of eight born to Zilpah ne Wadsworth (1778-1851) and lawyer Stephen Longfellow (1775-1849) in the city of Portland, Maine. Post by libraryanne February 6th, 2011, 2:42 pm. But his words also remind us that behind the clouds, the sun is always still shining. 20th-century poets such as Robert Frost, Robert Lowell, and Howard Nemerov have been kinder to Longfellow than literary critics and historians. "[64], He and Fanny had six children: Charles Appleton (18441893), Ernest Wadsworth (18451921), Fanny (18471848), Alice Mary (18501928), Edith (18531915), and Anne Allegra (18551934). [67], 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. His celebrity in his own time, however, has yielded to changing literary tastes and to reactions against the genteel tradition of authorship he represented. Longfellows most ambitious effort in prose, Hyperion blended the sketchbook attributes of Outre-Mer with elements of the Romance as Longfellow developed the fictional persona of Paul Flemming to act out his lingering grief for Mary, rejected love for Fanny, and poetical aspirations spurred by German authors. Longfellows immense popularity helped raise the status of poetry in his country, and he played an important part in bringing European cultural traditions to American audiences. [42] Three years later, he was inspired to write the poem "Footsteps of Angels" about her. Died on March 24, 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Hyatt Waggoner observed the irony of Longfellows having been most appreciated in his own time for A Psalm of Life, noting that though it intends to mean that life is worth living after all, what it effectively does mean is that life must be worth living but the poet cant think why. Longfellows imitativeness differed significantly from that of many contemporaries, however, in that he early outgrew his tendency to echo Bryants style or that of English Romantic poets and turned instead to German Romanticism, which he virtually introduced into American poetry, and to traditions of European verse from many countries and eras. C.S. Discover his most famous works and their themes and style. 'Farewell! Elected to the Peucinian Society, he mixed with the academically ambitious students of the college (more serious than his brother or than classmates Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin Pierce, and Horatio Bridgeall belonging to the Athenean Society). [55] During the courtship, Longfellow frequently walked from Cambridge to the Appleton home in Beacon Hill in Boston by crossing the Boston Bridge. The lady says she will not! The framework Longfellow provided, however, allowed his six storytellers (the Landlord, the Student, the Spanish Jew, the Italian, the Musician, and the Theologian) to criticize each others presentations and draw out lessons of tolerance, forgiveness, and faith. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), grew up in the house and went on to become one of the most famous men of his time. More important, Longfellow turned back to poetry after that second European journey and found encouragement in the warm reception of a group of poems he classified loosely as psalms. Although he never received any money from Knickerbockers, where several of these poems first appeared, Longfellow discovered an appreciative public response to the sad wisdom he had distilled from the disappointments of life; sadness empowered him to speak comforting, encouraging words to the many readers who responded gratefully to A Psalm of Life, The Reaper and the Flowers, The Light of Stars, Footsteps of Angels, and Midnight Mass for the Dying Year. He collected these and other early poems in Voices of the Night, like Hyperion published in 1839, and followed up on that success with Ballads and Other Poems (1842), which featured short narrative poems such as The Skeleton in Armor and The Wreck of the Hesperus, a character sketch that he thought of as another psalm titled The Village Blacksmith, and a poem of Romantic inspiration, Excelsior. He was exploring American subject matter in many of these poemseven in The Skeleton in Armor, which drew an unexpected link between medieval Scandinavian war songs and New England antiquities. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (born February 27, 1807, Portland, Massachusetts [now in Maine], U.S.died March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts), the most popular American poet in the 19th century, known for such works as The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and "Paul Revere's Ride" (1863). Other libraries with Longfellow materials include the Bowdoin College Library; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Boston Public Library; the Pierpont Morgan Library; the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; the Library of Congress; the Clifton Wallen Barrett Library, University of Virginia; the Henry E. Huntington Library; the Parkman Dexter Howe Library, University of Florida; and the University of Washington Library. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. one of the few truly successful English translations comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a professor of Italian at Harvard and an acclaimed poet. [4] He was named after his mother's brother Henry Wadsworth, a Navy lieutenant who had died three years earlier at the Battle of Tripoli. Mrs. How many languages did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow speak? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. In 1836 Longfellow returned to Harvard and settled in the famous Craigie House, which was later given to him as a wedding present when he remarried in 1843. Solo or group recordings that are finished and fully available for listeners. But the death in 1861 of his second wife, after she accidentally set her dress on fire, plunged him into melancholy. Aspiring to scholarly recognition beyond Brunswick, Longfellow also regularly wrote essays on French, Spanish, and Italian languages and literatures for the North American Review between 1831 and 1833. "[113], Longfellow's early collections Voices of the Night and Ballads and Other Poems made him instantly popular. When did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow say music is the universal language of mankind? 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". [140], Over the years, Longfellow's personality has become part of his reputation. Although the original story involved the maidens lifelong search only through New England, Longfellow extended its geographic range. Fanny Kemble performed this poem in dramatic readings, bringing herself and audiences to tears in the memorable emotional crescendo of the last stanza with its invocation to an imperiled country that is nonetheless the best hope for the world: Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! [56] Amidst this, he 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. [119] In the last two decades of his life, he often received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] was probably the most influential American poet of the 19th Century. 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". His father died in 1849, his brother Stephen in 1850, and his mother in 1851. [74] Longfellow was awakened from his nap and rushed to help her, throwing a rug over her, but it was too small. Hoffmann,Hans Christian Andersen,William Butler Yeats,Henry van Dyke,Leo . He was still writing learned essays for the North American Reviewthis time concentrating attention on Teutonic languages, including Swedish and early English. This period was also one of experimentation in dramatic writing, although publication of The Spanish Student was delayed until 1843. [125] Longfellow did not respond publicly but, after Poe's death, he wrote: "The harshness of his criticisms I have never attributed to anything but the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong". Marion 2. Longfellow managed to speak to the conflicts and at the same time to seem a safe haven, an anchor in the storm"("Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" Historic). He was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Harvard in 1859. [83] In 1874, Samuel 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. . 1807 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow born in Portland before it was transferred from Massachusetts to Maine; American poet of the fireside school. His son was injured during the war, and he wrote the poem "Christmas Bells", later the basis of the carol I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. Corrections? The first poem, Paul Reveres Ride, became a national favourite. At least as wearing as his original authorship in late years was a massive editorial and translation project he undertook for his publisher, James T. Fields; Poems of Places emerged in 31 volumes between 1876 and 1879. It comes not back again. [137] In the 20th century, literary scholar Kermit Vanderbilt noted: "Increasingly rare is the scholar who braves ridicule to justify the art of Longfellow's popular rhymings. [87], On August 22, 1879, a female admirer traveled to Longfellow's house in Cambridge and, unaware to whom she was speaking, asked him: "Is this the house where Longfellow was born?" -4 TALES OF A WAYSIDE INN. It is not pride, but the madness of passion". In Germany, Longfellow settled down to relatively disciplined study in preparation for his Bowdoin professorship, though his readings there focused more on Spanish literature than German. The Tales of a Wayside Inn, modeled roughly on Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales and published in 1863, reveals his narrative gift. The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Paul Revere's Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline, Christus: A Mystery, The Masque Of Pandora and More. Two notable exceptions are dedicated to the death of members of his family. 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