Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

During the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow enjoyed phenomenal popularity as a poet. His commercial success stimu-lated new regard for literature as a viable profession as well as a pleasurable entertainment. While preparing for professorships in modern European languages at Bowdoin (1829–35) and Harvard (1835–54) colleges, Longfellow traveled extensively in Europe, learning German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Scandinavian languages. The literary traditions he absorbed through his travels and studies influ-enced the poetry he began publishing in 1839.

Longfellow wrote his best-known works after retiring from teaching. “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855), “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858), and “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861) are highly imagi-native fictions inspired by events from Indigenous and colonial American history. In addition to sell-ing thousands of copies in the United States, Longfellow’s works gained an appreciate interna-tional audience and were translated into twenty-four languages, many of which he had mastered himself.