Henry+Wadsworth-Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow was a powerful figure in nineteenth century America. Born in 1807, he had become a national literary figure by the 1850s. Although he was born and educated in Maine many associate him with the city of Cambridge Massachusetts due to the fact that the majority of his literary career developed during his time working at Harvard University. Longfellow attended Bowdoin College where he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, his lifelong friend and colleague. After graduation he became a professor of modern languages for his alma mater and was later able to continue this profession at Harvard. Longfellow was an avid writer since childhood. He published his first poem at age thirteen in the Portland Evening Gazette and continued publishing and working the literary world throughout his life as an editor, anthologist, translator, playwright, novelist, and, most notably, a poet. His many published works were best sellers and often had multiple editions. Some of his most recognizable works include: According to the Literature Online Biography, Longfellow enjoyed world-wide veneration and celebrity and was the closest thing the United States had to an unofficial poet laureate. In Europe he received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge; he was received by Queen Victoria and the Archbishop of Canterbury; he visited Charles Dickens and Lord Tennyson; and Victor Hugo did much to cement his reputation in France and elsewhere on the continent. His celebrity was diminished, however, in the period after World War I the 'rediscovery' of Whitman and the 'discovery' of Emily Dickinson.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807-1882 **
 * Ballads and Other Poems (1841)
 * Poems on Slavery (1844)
 * Evangeline (1847)
 * The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
 * The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
 * Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
 * A translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (1867)
 * Keramos (1878)

from Literature Online biography by Chadwyck-Healey, (Cambridge, 2001)