Longfellow's 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. After her death, he had difficulty writing poetry for a time and focused on translating works from foreign languages. Longfellow died in 1882.
Longfellow wrote many lyric poems known for their musicality and often presenting stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and had success overseas. He has been criticized for imitating European styles and writing poetry that was too sentimental.
Longfellow attended adame school at the age of three and was enrolled by age six at the privatePortland Academy. In his years there, he earned a reputation as being very studious and became fluent in Latin.[10] His mother encouraged his enthusiasm for reading and learning, introducing him toRobinson Crusoe andDon Quixote.[11] He published his first poem at age 13 in the PortlandGazette on November 17, 1820, a patriotic and historical four-stanza poem called "The Battle of Lovell's Pond".[12] He studied at the Portland Academy until age 14. He spent much of his summers as a child at his grandfather Peleg's farm inHiram, Maine.
In the fall of 1822, 15-year-old Longfellow enrolled atBowdoin College inBrunswick, Maine, along with his brother Stephen.[10] His grandfather was a founder of the college[13] and his father was a trustee.[10] There Longfellow metNathaniel Hawthorne who became his lifelong friend.[14] He boarded with a clergyman for a time before rooming on the third floor[15] in 1823 of what is now known as Winthrop Hall.[16] He joined thePeucinian Society, a group of students withFederalist leanings.[17] In his senior year, Longfellow wrote to his father about his aspirations:
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.[18]
He pursued his literary goals by submitting poetry and prose to various newspapers and magazines, partly due to encouragement from ProfessorThomas Cogswell Upham.[19] He published nearly 40 minor poems between January 1824 and his graduation in 1825.[20] About 24 of them were published in the short-lived Boston periodicalThe United States Literary Gazette.[17] When Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin, he was ranked fourth in the class and had been elected toPhi Beta Kappa.[21] He gave the student commencement address.[19]
After graduating in 1825, Longfellow was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. An apocryphal story claims that college trusteeBenjamin Orr had been impressed by Longfellow's translation ofHorace and hired him under the condition that he travel to Europe to study French, Spanish, and Italian.[22]
Whatever the catalyst, Longfellow began his tour of Europe in May 1826 aboard the shipCadmus.[23] His time abroad lasted three years and cost his father $2,604.24,[24] the equivalent of over $67,000 today.[25] He traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, back to France, then to England before returning to the United States in mid-August 1829.[26] While overseas, he learned French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, mostly without formal instruction.[27] In Madrid, he spent time withWashington Irving and was particularly impressed by the author's work ethic.[28] Irving encouraged the young Longfellow to pursue writing.[29] While in Spain, Longfellow was saddened to learn that his favorite sister Elizabeth had died oftuberculosis at the age of 20 in May 1829.[30]
On August 27, 1829, he wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 (~$17,717 in 2024) salary "disproportionate to the duties required". 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.[31] During his years teaching at the college, he translated textbooks from French, Italian, and Spanish;[32] his first published book was a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poetJorge Manrique in 1833.[33]
He published the travel bookOutre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea inserial form before a book edition was released in 1835.[32] Shortly after the book's publication, Longfellow attempted to join the literary circle in New York and askedGeorge Pope Morris for an editorial role at one of Morris's publications. He considered moving to New York after New York University proposed offering him a newly created professorship of modern languages, but there would be no salary. The professorship was not created and Longfellow agreed to continue teaching at Bowdoin.[34] It may have been joyless work. He wrote, "I hate the sight of pen, ink, and paper ... I do not believe that I was born for such a lot. I have aimed higher than this".[35]
Mary Storer Potter became Longfellow's first wife in 1831 and died four years later.
On September 14, 1831, Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, a childhood friend from Portland.[36] The couple settled in Brunswick, but the two were not happy there.[37] Longfellow published several nonfiction and fiction prose pieces in 1833 inspired by Irving, including "The Indian Summer" and "The Bald Eagle".[38]
In December 1834, Longfellow received a letter fromJosiah 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.[39] There, he further studied German as well as Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, and Icelandic.[40] In October 1835, his wife Mary had a miscarriage during the trip, about six months into her pregnancy.[41] 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 in a lead coffin inside an oak coffin, which was shipped toMount Auburn Cemetery near Boston.[42] He was deeply saddened by her death and wrote: "One thought occupies me night and day...She is dead – She is dead! All day I am weary and sad".[43] Three years later, he was inspired to write the poem "Footsteps of Angels" about her. Several years later, he wrote the poem "Mezzo Cammin", which expressed his personal struggles in his middle years.[44]
Longfellow began publishing his poetry in 1839, including the collectionVoices of the Night, his debut book of poetry.[48] The bulk ofVoices of the Night was translations, but he included nine original poems and seven poems that he had written as a teenager.[49]Ballads and Other Poems was published in 1841[50] and included "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus", which were instantly popular.[51] He became part of the local social scene, creating a group of friends who called themselves the Five of Clubs. Members includedCornelius Conway Felton,George Stillman Hillard, andCharles Sumner; Sumner became Longfellow's closest friend over the next 30 years.[52] Longfellow was well liked as a professor, but he disliked being "constantly a playmate for boys" rather than "stretching out and grappling with men's minds."[53]
After a seven-year courtship, Longfellow married Frances Appleton in 1843
Longfellow met Boston industrialistNathan Appleton and his sonThomas Gold Appleton in the town ofThun, Switzerland. There he began courting Appleton's daughter Frances "Fanny" Appleton. The independent-minded Fanny was not interested in marriage, but Longfellow was determined.[54] In July 1839, he wrote to a friend: "Victory hangs doubtful. The lady says shewill not! I say sheshall! It is notpride, but the madness of passion".[55] His friend George Stillman Hillard encouraged him 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".[56] During the courtship, Longfellow frequently walked from Cambridge to the Appleton home inBeacon Hill in Boston by crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was replaced in 1906 by a new bridge which was later renamed theLongfellow Bridge.
In late 1839, Longfellow publishedHyperion, inspired by his trips abroad[55] and his unsuccessful courtship of Fanny Appleton.[57] Amidst this, he fell into "periods of neurotic depression with moments of panic" and took a six-month leave of absence fromHarvard University to attend a health spa in the former Marienberg Benedictine Convent atBoppard in Germany.[57] After returning, he published the playThe Spanish Student in 1842, reflecting his memories from his time in Spain in the 1820s.[58]
Fanny Appleton Longfellow, with sons Charles and Ernest, circa 1849
The small collectionPoems 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".[59] A critic forThe 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".[60] TheNew England Anti-Slavery Society, however, was satisfied enough with the collection to reprint it for further distribution.[61]
On May 10, 1843, Longfellow received a letter from Fanny Appleton agreeing to marry him. He was too restless to take a carriage and walked 90 minutes to meet her at her house.[62] They were soon married; Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House as a wedding present, and Longfellow lived there for the rest of his life.[63] His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from his only love poem, the sonnet "The Evening Star"[64] 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."[65]
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 was Edith who marriedRichard Henry Dana III, son ofRichard Henry Dana Jr. who wroteTwo Years Before the Mast.[66] Their daughter Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, and Dr.Nathan Cooley Keep administeredether to the mother as the first obstetricanesthetic in the United States.[67] Longfellow published his epic poemEvangeline for the first time a few months later on November 1, 1847.[67] His literary income was increasing considerably; in 1840, he had made $219 from his work, but 1850 brought him $1,900.[68]
On June 14, 1853, Longfellow held a farewell dinner party at his Cambridge home for his friendNathaniel Hawthorne, who was preparing to move overseas.[69] In 1854, he retired from Harvard,[70] devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws from Harvard in 1859.[71]
Frances was putting locks of her children's hair into an envelope on July 9, 1861[72] and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax while Longfellow took a nap.[73] Her dress suddenly caught fire, but it is unclear exactly how;[74] burning wax or a lighted candle may have fallen onto it.[75] Longfellow was awakened from his nap and rushed to help her, throwing a rug over her, but it was too small. He stifled the flames with his body, but she was badly burned.[74] Longfellow's youngest daughter Annie explained the story differently some 50 years later, claiming that there had been no candle or wax but that the fire had started from aself-lighting match that had fallen on the floor.[66] Both accounts state that Frances was taken to her room to recover, and a doctor was called. She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was administeredether. She died shortly after 10 the next morning, July 10, after requesting a cup of coffee.[76] Longfellow had burned himself while trying to save her, badly enough that he was unable to attend her funeral.[77] His facial injuries led him to stop shaving, and he wore a beard from then on which became his trademark.[76]
Longfellow was devastated by Frances's death and never fully recovered; he occasionally resorted tolaudanum and ether to deal with his grief.[78] He worried that he would go insane, begging "not to be sent to an asylum" and noting that he was "inwardly bleeding to death".[79] He expressed his grief in the sonnet "The Cross of Snow" (1879) which he wrote 18 years later to commemorate her death:[44]
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.[79]
Longfellow spent several years translatingDante Alighieri'sDivine Comedy. To aid him in perfecting the translation and reviewing proofs, he invited friends to meetings every Wednesday starting in 1864.[80] The "Dante Club", as it was called, regularly includedWilliam Dean Howells,James Russell Lowell, andCharles Eliot Norton, as well as other occasional guests.[81] The full three-volume translation was published in the spring of 1867, but Longfellow continued to revise it.[82] It went through four printings in its first year.[83] By 1868, Longfellow's annual income was over $48,000 (~$939,632 in 2024).[84] In 1874,Samuel Ward helped him sell the poem "The Hanging of the Crane" toThe New York Ledger for $3,000 (~$83,374 in 2024). At that time, this was the highest price ever paid for a poem.[85]
Longfellow supportedabolitionism and especially hoped for reconciliation between the northern and southern states after theAmerican Civil War. His son Charles was injured during the war,[86] and he wrote the poem "Christmas Bells", later the basis of the carolI Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. 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".[87] Longfellow accepted an offer fromJoshua Chamberlain to speak at his fiftieth reunion at Bowdoin College, despite his aversion to public speaking. He read the poem "Morituri Salutamus" so quietly that few could hear him.[88] The next year, he declined an offer to be nominated for the Board of Overseers at Harvard "for reasons very conclusive to my own mind".[89]
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?" He told her that it was not. The visitor then asked if he had died here. "Not yet", he replied.[90] In March 1882, Longfellow went to bed with severe stomach pain. He endured the pain for several days with the help ofopium before he died surrounded by family on Friday, March 24.[91] He had been suffering fromperitonitis.[92] At the time of his death, his estate was worth an estimated $356,320 (~$12 million in 2024 terms).[84] He is buried with both of his wives atMount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His last few years were spent translating the poetry ofMichelangelo. Longfellow never considered it complete enough to be published during his lifetime, but 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.[93]
Much of Longfellow's work is categorized aslyric poetry, but he experimented with many forms, includinghexameter andfree verse.[94] His published poetry shows great versatility, usinganapestic andtrochaic forms,blank verse,heroic couplets,ballads, andsonnets.[95] Typically, he would carefully consider the subject of his poetic ideas for a long time before deciding on the right metrical form for it.[96] Much of his work is recognized for its melodious musicality.[97] As he says, "what a writer asks of his reader is not so much tolike as tolisten".[98]
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. "Resignation" was written as a response to the death of his daughter Fanny in 1848; it does not use first-person pronouns and is instead a generalized poem of mourning.[99] 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".[100] His memorial poem to her was the sonnet "The Cross of Snow" and was not published in his lifetime.[99]
Longfellow often useddidacticism in his poetry, but he focused on it less in his later years.[101] Much of his poetry imparts cultural and moral values, particularly focused on life being more than material pursuits.[102] He often usedallegory in his work. In "Nature", for example, death is depicted as bedtime for a cranky child.[103] Many of themetaphors that he used in his poetry came from legends, mythology, and literature.[104] He was inspired, for example, byNorse mythology for "The Skeleton in Armor" and by Finnish legends forThe Song of Hiawatha.[105]
Longfellow rarely wrote on current subjects and seemed detached from contemporary American concerns.[106] Even so, he called for the development of high quality American literature, as did many others during this period. InKavanagh, a character says:
We want a national literature commensurate with our mountains and rivers ... We want a national epic that shall correspond to the size of the country ... We want a national drama in which scope shall be given to our gigantic ideas and to the unparalleled activity of our people ... In a word, we want a national literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies.[107]
He was important as a translator; his translation of Dante became a required possession for those who wanted to be a part of high culture.[108] He encouraged and supported other translators, as well. In 1845, he publishedThe Poets and Poetry of Europe, an 800-page compilation of translations made by other writers, including many by his friend and colleagueCornelius Conway Felton. Longfellow intended the anthology "to bring together, into a compact and convenient form, as large an amount as possible of those English translations which are scattered through many volumes, and are not accessible to the general reader".[109] In honor of his role with translations, Harvard established the Longfellow Institute in 1994, dedicated to literature written in the United States in languages other than English.[110]
In 1874, Longfellow oversaw a 31-volume anthology calledPoems of Places which collected poems representing several geographical locations, including European, Asian, and Arabian countries.[111] Emerson was disappointed and reportedly told Longfellow: "The world is expecting better things of you than this ... You are wasting time that should be bestowed upon original production".[112] In preparing the volume, Longfellow hiredKatherine Sherwood Bonner as anamanuensis.[113]
Fellow Portland, Maine, nativeJohn Neal published the first substantial praise of Longfellow's work.[114] In the January 23, 1828, issue of his magazineThe Yankee, he wrote, "As for Mr. Longfellow, he has a fine genius and a pure and safe taste, and all that he wants, we believe, is a little more energy, and a little more stoutness."[115]
Longfellow's early collectionsVoices of the Night andBallads and Other Poems made him instantly popular. TheNew-Yorker called him "one of the very few in our time who has successfully aimed in putting poetry to its best and sweetest uses".[51] TheSouthern Literary Messenger immediately put Longfellow "among the first of our American poets".[51] PoetJohn Greenleaf Whittier said that Longfellow's poetry illustrated "the careful moulding by which art attains the graceful ease and chaste simplicity of nature".[116] Longfellow's friendOliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote of him as "our chief singer" and one who "wins and warms ... kindles, softens, cheers [and] calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears!"[117]
The rapidity with which American readers embraced Longfellow was unparalleled in publishing history in the United States;[118] by 1874, he was earning $3,000 (~$83,374 in 2024) per poem.[119] His popularity spread throughout Europe as well, and his poetry was translated during his lifetime into Italian, French, German, and other languages.[120] ScholarBliss Perry suggests that criticizing Longfellow at that time was almost a criminal act equal to "carrying a rifle into a national park".[121] In the last two decades of his life, he often received requests for autographs from strangers, which he always sent.[122] John Greenleaf Whittier suggested that it was this massive correspondence which led to Longfellow's death: "My friend Longfellow was driven to death by these incessant demands".[123]
Contemporaneous writerEdgar Allan Poe wrote to Longfellow in May 1841 of his "fervent admiration which [your] genius has inspired in me" and later called him "unquestionably the best poet in America".[124] Poe's reputation increased as a critic, however, and he later publicly accused Longfellow ofplagiarism in what Poe biographers call "The Longfellow War".[125] He wrote that Longfellow was "a determined imitator and a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people",[124] specificallyAlfred, Lord Tennyson.[126] His accusations may have been a publicity stunt to boost readership of theBroadway Journal, for which he was the editor at the time.[127] 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".[128]
Margaret Fuller judged Longfellow "artificial and imitative" and lacking force.[129] PoetWalt Whitman considered him an imitator of European forms, but he praised his ability to reach a popular audience as "the expressor of common themes—of the little songs of the masses".[130] He added, "Longfellow was no revolutionarie: never traveled new paths: of course never broke new paths."[131]Lewis Mumford said that Longfellow could be completely removed from the history of literature without much effect.[106]
Toward the end of his life, contemporaries considered him as more of achildren's poet,[132] as many of his readers were children.[133] A reviewer in 1848 accused Longfellow of creating a "goody two-shoes kind of literature ... slipshod, sentimental stories told in the style of the nursery, beginning in nothing and ending in nothing".[134] A more modern critic said, "Who, except wretched schoolchildren, now reads Longfellow?"[106] A London critic in theLondon Quarterly Review, however, condemnedall American poetry—"with two or three exceptions, there is not a poet of mark in the whole union"—but he singled out Longfellow as one of those exceptions.[135] An editor of theBoston Evening Transcript wrote in 1846, "Whatever the miserable envy of trashy criticism may write against Longfellow, one thing is most certain, no American poet is more read".[136]
Longfellow was the most popular poet of his day.[137] As a friend once wrote, "no other poet was so fully recognized in his lifetime".[138] Many of his works helped shape the American character and its legacy, particularly with the poem "Paul Revere's Ride".[121] He was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. Longfellow's popularity rapidly declined, beginning shortly after his death and into the 20th century, as academics focused attention on other poets such as Walt Whitman,Edwin Arlington Robinson, andRobert Frost.[139] 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."[140] Twentieth-century poetLewis Putnam Turco concluded that "Longfellow was minor and derivative in every way throughout his career ... nothing more than a hack imitator of the English Romantics."[141] AuthorNicholas A. Basbanes, in his 2020 bookCross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, defended Longfellow as "the victim of an orchestrated dismissal that may well be unique in American literary history".[142]
Over the years, Longfellow's personality has become part of his reputation. He has been presented as a gentle, placid, poetic soul, an image perpetuated by his brother Samuel Longfellow who wrote an early biography which specifically emphasized these points.[143] As James Russell Lowell said, Longfellow had an "absolute sweetness, simplicity, and modesty".[128] At Longfellow's funeral, his friendRalph Waldo Emerson called him "a sweet and beautiful soul".[144] In reality, his life was much more difficult than was assumed. He suffered fromneuralgia, which caused him constant pain, and he had poor eyesight. He wrote to friend Charles Sumner: "I do not believe anyonecan be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart".[145] He had difficulty coping with the death of his second wife Frances.[78] Longfellow was very quiet, reserved, and private; in later years, he was known for being unsocial and avoided leaving home.[146]
Longfellow had become one of the first American celebrities and was popular in Europe. It was reported that 10,000 copies ofThe Courtship of Miles Standish sold in London in a single day.[147] Children adored him; "The Village Blacksmith"'s "spreading chestnut-tree" was cut down and the children of Cambridge had it converted into an armchair which they presented to him.[148] In 1884, Longfellow became the first non-British writer for whom a commemorative bust was placed inPoet's Corner ofWestminster Abbey in London; he remains the only American poet represented with a bust.[149] The king of Italy conferred on him theOrder of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, but Longfellow declined it, explaining to a friend that he "did not think it appropriate for a Republican and a protestant to receive a Catholic order of knighthood".[150]
As a memorial to their father, Longfellow's children donated land across Brattle Street and facing the family home to the City of Cambridge, which became Longfellow Park. A monument featuring a bas relief of Miles Standish, Sadalphon, the Village Blacksmith, the Spanish Student, Evangeline, and Hiawatha, characters from Longfellow's works, was dedicated in October 1914.[151]
^Farnham, Russell Clare and Dorthy Evelyn Crawford.A Longfellow Genealogy: Comprising the English Ancestry and Descendants of the Immigrant William Longfellow of Newbury, Massachusetts, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Walrus Publishers, 2002.
^Jacob, Kathryn Allaying (2010).King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 98.ISBN978-0801893971.
^Lease, Benjamin (1972).That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p. 129.ISBN0-226-46969-7.
^Sears, Donald A. (1978).John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. p. 113, quoting Neal.ISBN080-5-7723-08.
Davidson, Thomas (1911). "Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.)Encyclopædia Britannica.16. (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 977–980.
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