
Biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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.
Henry was a dreamy boy who loved to read. He heard sailors speaking Spanish, French and German in the Portland streets and liked stories set in foreign places: The Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, and the plays of Shakespeare.
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.”
Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Canzone
- A Gleam Of Sunshine
- A Nameless Grave
- A Psalm of Life
- A Shadow
- A Song Of Savoy
- A Summer Day By The Sea
- Aftermath
- Afternoon In February
- Agassiz
- An April Day
- Autumn
- Autumn Within
- Autumnal Nightfall
- Beleaguered City, The
- Belisarius
- Birds Of Passage
- Blessing The Cornfields
- Blind Bartimeus
- Boston
- Burial Of The Minnisink
- Carillon
- Chaucer
- Children
- Christmas Bells
- Curfew
- Dante
- Daylight And Moonlight
- Divina Commedia
- Drinking Song
- Elliot's Oak
- Evening Star, The
- Excelsior
- Fata Morgana
- Flowers
- Footsteps Of Angels
- Garfield
- God's-Acre
- Haroun Al Raschid
- Helen Of Tyre
- Hermes Trismegistus
- Hiawatha And Mudjekeewis
- Hiawatha And The Pearl-Feather
- Hiawatha's Childhood
- Hiawatha's Departure
- Hiawatha's Fasting
- Hiawatha's Fishing
- Hiawatha's Fishing
- Hiawatha's Friends
- Hiawatha's Lamentation
- Hiawatha's Sailing
- Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast
- Holidays
- Hymn For My Brother's Ordination
- Hymn to the Night
- I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
- Inscription On The Shanklin Fountain
- It Is Not Always May
- Italian Scenery
- Jeckoyva
- Jugurtha
- Keats
- Kéramos
- King Trisanku
- L'Envoi
- Light Of Stars, The
- Loss And Gain
- Maidenhood
- Mezzo Cammin
- Midnight Mass For The Dying Year
- Milton
- Moods
- Moonlight
- Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College
- Mr. Finney's Turnip
- Musings
- My Books
- My Lost Youth
- Nature
- Nuremberg
- O Ship Of State
- Old St David's At Radnor
- Pau-Puk-Keewis
- Pegasus in Pound
- Picture-Writing
- Rain In Summer
- Seaweed
- Shakespeare
- Sir Humphrey Gilbert
- Sir Humphrey Gilbert
- Sleep
- Snow-flakes
- Something Left Undone
- Song
- Sound Of The Sea, The
- Spirit Of Poetry, The
- Sundown
- Sunrise On The Hills
- Suspiria
- Tegner's Drapa
- Thangbrand The Priest
- Thanksgiving
- The Arrow and the Song
- The Arsenal at Springfield
- The Belfrey Of Bruges
- The Bells of San Blas
- The Bridge
- The Broken Oar
- The Building of the Ship
- The Burial Of The Poet
- The Challenge Of Thor
- The Chamber Over The Gate
- The Children's Hour
- The Courtship Of Miles Standish
- The Cross of Snow
- The Day is Done
- The Death Of Kwasind
- The Demoniac Of Gadara
- The Descent Of The Muses
- The Evening Star
- The Famine
- The Fire of Drift-wood
- The Four Winds
- The Galaxy
- The Ghosts
- The Goblet Of Life
- The Good Part That Shall Not Be Taken Away
- The Hanging Of The Crane
- The Harvest Moon
- The Hunting Of Pau-Puk Keewis
- The Indian Hunter
- The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
- The Ladder of St. Augustine
- The Landlord's Tale. Paul Revere's Ride
- The Lunatic Girl
- The Masque Of Pandora
- The Meeting
- The Norman Baron
- The Occultation Of Orion
- The Old Bridge At Florence
- The Old Clock on the Stairs
- The Peace-Pipe
- The Poet's Calendar
- The Poets
- The Psalm Of Life
- The Quadroon Girl
- The Rainy Day
- The Reaper And The Flowers
- The Republic
- The Revenge Of Rain-In-The-Face
- The Sea Diver
- The Skeleton in Armor
- The Slave In The Dismal Swamp
- The Slave's Dream
- The Son Of The Evening Star
- The Sound Of The Sea
- The Three Kings
- The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
- The Two Rivers
- The Venetian Gondolier
- The Village Blacksmith
- The White Man's Foot
- The White Tzar
- The Witnesses
- The Wreck of the Hesperus
- There was a little girl
- Three Friends Of Mine
- To A Child
- To The Driving Cloud
- To The River Charles
- To The River Rhone
- To Vittoria Colonna. (Sonnet V.)
- Ultima Thule: Dedication to G. W. G.
- Ultima Thule: The Windmill
- Venice
- Village Blacksmith, The
- Vittoria Colonna
- Voices Of The Night
- Wapentake
- Woods In Winter
- Woodstock Park