In 1831, he married Mary Potter, and they went on an extended tour of Europe. She named this second son among her eight children for her brother, Henry Wadsworth, who had died in Tripoli harbor in 1804. Mrs. James Bowdoin, for whose late husband the college had been named, contributed $1,000 to endow a professorship in modern languages (only the fourth in the United States), andon the strength of Longfellows translation of a Horace ode that had impressed one of his fathers colleagues among Bowdoin trusteescollege authorities offered the position to the young graduate at his 1825 commencement on the condition that he prepare for the post by visiting Europe and becoming accomplished in Romance languages. [50] He became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow, Academy of American Poets - Biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, National Park Service - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Official Site of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Maine: An Encyclopedia - Biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poetry Foundation - Biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). Daughter of Nathan Appleton I b. In 1835, saddened by the death of his first wife, whom he had married in 1831, he settled at Heidelberg, where he fell under the influence of German Romanticism. He was so fluent in translating that on graduation he was offered a professorship in modern languages provided that he would first study in Europe. [96], As a very private man, Longfellow did not often add autobiographical elements to his poetry. [111], Fellow Portland, Maine native John Neal published the first substantial praise of Longfellow's work. We speak of a continuum because there are inter- mediate economies, combining horticultural and agricultural featuresmore intensive than annually shifting horticulture but less intensive than agricul- ture. Henry is an American . A driving northwesterly storm succeeded, and before the sun was set every vestige of spring had vanished; the lake, the mountains, the village, and the fields being again hidden under one dazzling coat of snow. 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. [102] He was inspired, for example, by Norse mythology for "The Skeleton in Armor" and by Finnish legends for The Song of Hiawatha.[103]. Wife of Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Fanny Longfellow (1817-1861), wife of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was a skilled artist and was well-read in many subjects. Favorable responses to poems, reviews, sketches, and essays he contributed to the Portland Advertiser, American Monthly Magazine, and United States Literary Gazette sparked hopes for editing and writing opportunities that collided against the materialistic pragmatism of New England culture. Their children were: Alice Mary born in about 1850, Ernest Wadsworth born in about 1845, Charles Appleton born in about 1844, Fanny born in about 1847 and died in 1848, Edith born in 1853, and Anne Allegra born in 1855. He endured the pain for several days with the help of opium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24. He also wrote novels and translated Dante's "Divine Comedy" into English. He told her that it was not. In these verse dramas set in Puritan Massachusetts, Longfellow attempted to bring forward his story into relatively modern times (post-Reformation) and into the new world, though Quaker persecutions and the Salem witchcraft frenzy may seem unlikely illustrations of Christian charity. His last few years were spent translating the poetry of Michelangelo. He sailed from New York to Le Havre in May 1826 and spent the next three years rambling through Europes cities and countrysides, absorbing impressions of cultures and places, living with families in Paris, Madrid, and Rome, and developing linguistic fluency. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) was America's most beloved nineteenth-century poet, . Much of the charm of the poem lies in its evocation of place, from the pastoral Grand-Pr, where Benedict Bellefontaine, Evangelines father, dwelt on his goodly acres, through the bayous of Louisiana, where the Acadian blacksmith Basil Lajeunesse, Gabriels father, achieves new prosperity as a rancher, through the forests of French mission territory at the base of the Ozarks, where Evangeline ventures in seeking Gabriel, all the way to Philadelphia, where the aged heroine finds her lover dying in a hospital for plague victims and where they are buried together. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather was Peleg Wadsworth, a general in the American Revolutionary War and a Member of Congress. 1385 likes. See answer (1) Copy. For advice, he gathered weekly evening sessions of his Dante Club of writer-scholarsamong them James Russell Lowell, who had succeeded Longfellow as Smith Professor; Charles Eliot Norton, who eventually published his own prose translation of Dantes masterpiece; and William Dean Howells. There he settled down to his professorial duties at Harvard, freed from some of the Bowdoin drudgery but still feeling oppressed by responsibilities to supervise native-language instructors and provide some basic instruction himself in each of the languages in the curriculum of the university while preparing lectures on European literatures. The mansion was the poet's home until he entered Bowdoin College in 1821. The marriage was an exceptionally happy one for both partners and brought Longfellow the domestic stability he had missed. [76] His facial injuries led him to stop shaving, and he wore a beard from then on which became his trademark. Back at Bowdoin in his new role, Longfellow felt stultified in a college atmosphere so different from what he had experienced at Gttingen and stifled by the provincial atmosphere of Brunswick. Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine,[1] then a district of Massachusetts. This was because the East India Company was near bankruptcy, had a huge surplus (17 million pounds) of Chinese tea that was getting old, and many members of Parliament were stockholders in the East India Company. Long after his death in 1882, however, these neglected later works were seen to contain some of his most effective writing. To a Lady 5. [110] In preparing the volume, Longfellow hired Katherine Sherwood Bonner as an amanuensis. How different is today's global economy from British poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's vision of productionnoble, lo- cal . Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. Learn more about narrative poetry here. 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). Many, especially Torquemada and The Saga of King Olaf, were surprisingly violent. . from. 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. That poem appeared in one of those assemblages of short poems, identified as Birds of Passage, that Longfellow introduced in The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems and returned to frequently in subsequent volumes. Still committed to the native writers of the United States, he wrote a July 1837 review in praise of Hawthornes Twice-Told Tales (1837) even as he turned his own ambitions back toward the writing of poetry. Longfellows long poem The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858) was another great popular success. Longfellow himself may have recognized that the sections did not cohere and that the historical sequence ended in anticlimax; he thought of adding another drama on the Moravians of Bethlehem to show the positive influence of the Gospel, but he never carried out his intention. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. [66] Longfellow published his epic poem Evangeline for the first time a few months later on November 1, 1847. "[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. To a Child, one of the most popular poems of the book, expressed paternal tenderness toward his first son, while the sonnet Dante looked toward a later stage of literary productivity. [140], Over the years, Longfellow's personality has become part of his reputation. [5] He was the second of eight children. Just like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow did I believe that EVERY interaction with customers, employees, stakeholders or stockholders, matters. [28] While in Spain, Longfellow was saddened to learn that his favorite sister Elizabeth had died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 that May. [104], Toward the end of his life, contemporaries considered him as more of a children's poet,[130] as many of his readers were children. 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. While coping with private tragedy at home, he suffered the additional trauma of the Civil War. [80] The full three-volume translation was published in the spring of 1867, but Longfellow continued to revise it. Born on February 27 46. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [1] The song tells of the narrator hearing Christmas bells during the American Civil War, but despairing that "hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men". Although Longfellow introduced a love story in his account of Hiawathas wooing of Minnehaha, their marriage, and her death, for the most part he assembled legends he found in Schoolcrafts many books to exalt his Ojibway hero as a leader of supernatural birth (son of the West Wind, Mudjekeewis, and of Wenonah, whose mother, Nokomis, had fallen from the heavens) who leads his people in ways of peace. His model was Washington Irving, to whom he was introduced while in Spain, and Longfellow envisaged putting his experience to Irvingesque literary use. This period was also one of experimentation in dramatic writing, although publication of The Spanish Student was delayed until 1843. His 1868-1869 final visit to Europe, on which he was attended by a large family party, turned into a triumphal progression framed by honorary degrees awarded by Cambridge and Oxford universities. In 1855, using Henry Rowe Schoolcrafts two books on the Indian tribes of North America as the base and the trochaic metrics of the Finnish epic Kalevala as his medium, he fashioned The Song of Hiawatha (1855). Written for the 15th reunion of his Bowdoin College class, it is a memorable reflection on aging and is Longfellows most admired ode. Longfellow attended a dame school at the age of three and was enrolled by age six at the private Portland Academy. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. There is little action in the story as Longfellow tells it: the Acadians submit quietly to British tyranny; Gabriels adventures take place out of sight; and Evangelines quest involves a good deal of travel, admittedly, but no conflict. The poem exalts and exocitizes Native Americans and assumes the obliteration of indigenous ways of life. Longfellow's father was eager to have his son become a lawyer. 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. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline.He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of . Mrs. How many languages did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow speak? Test. Page III CONTENTS. [93] Typically, he would carefully consider the subject of his poetic ideas for a long time before deciding on the right metrical form for it. 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. After residing in Europe for four years to qualify for the Chair of Modern Languages in that College, he entered upon the duties of the same. Volumes of selected poems emerged along with reprintings of earlier books and individual poems in varied formats and price ranges. [61] They were soon married; Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House as a wedding present, and Longfellow lived there for the rest of his life. Wadsworth, who had died in Tripoli harbor in 1804 published the first time a few months on... 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