Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow always amused himself, as do most public men, with the confused and contradictory descriptions of his personal appearance: with the Newport bookseller who exclaimed,...

While he was thus occupied with thoughts and studies which proved to be more far-seeing than he knew, the young professor was embarrassed by financial difficulties in which the...

The great literary lesson of Longfellow's life is to be found, after all, in this, that while he was the first among American poets to create for himself a world-wide fame, he w...

It is interesting to know that twice, during his college days, Longfellow had occasion to show his essentially American feeling; first, in his plea for the Indians on an Exhibit...

That the young professor rose very early for literary work, even in November, we know by his own letters, and we also know that he then as always took this work very seriously a...

Let us now return from the history of Longfellow's academic life to his normal pursuit, literature. It seemed a curious transition from the real and genuine sympathy for human w...

Longfellow's college class (1825) numbered thirty-seven, and his rank in it at graduation was nominally fourth--though actually third, through the sudden death of a classmate ju...

The year 1841 was on the whole a rather dazzling period for the young poet. His first volume had been received with enthusiasm. His second volume was under way. He had a circle...

"Outre-Mer" had been published some time before, with moderate success, but "Hyperion" was destined to attract far more attention. It is first mentioned in his journal on Septem...

It is difficult now to realize what an event in Longfellow's life was the fact of his writing a series of anti-slavery poems on board ship and publishing them in a thin pamphlet...

After all, no translation, even taken at its best, can wholly satisfy an essentially original mind. Longfellow wrote in his diary, November 19, 1849, as follows: "And now I long...

There was never any want of promptness or of industry about Longfellow, though his time was apt to be at the mercy of friends or strangers. "Hyperion" appeared in the summer of...

There exists abundant evidence, to which the present writer can add personal testimony, in regard to Longfellow's success as an organizer of his immediate department of Harvard...

We come now to that great task which Longfellow, after an early experiment, had dropped for years, and which he resumed after his wife's death, largely for the sake of an absorb...

Longfellow was the first American to be commemorated, on the mere ground of public service and distant kinship of blood, in Westminster Abbey. The impressions made by that circu...

On the last day of 1853, Longfellow wrote in his diary, "How barren of all poetic production and even prose production this last year has been! For 1853 I have absolutely nothin...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807, being the son of Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow, both his parents having been descended fro...

The death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the first breach in that well-known group of poets which adorned Boston and its vicinity so long. The first to go was also the most...

MY DEAR SIR,--I trust that my last letter to my father has in some measure prepared your mind for the melancholy intelligence which this will bring to you. Our beloved Mary is n...

It has been a source of regret to many that the memoirs of Longfellow, even when prepared by his brother, have given, perhaps necessarily, so little space to his early love and...

In entering on the duties of his Harvard professorship (December, 1836) Longfellow took rooms at the Craigie House in Cambridge. This house, so long his residence, has been clai...

Longfellow graduated at Bowdoin College in June, 1825. There was in his mind, apparently, from the first, that definiteness of purpose which is so often wanting when a student t...

On May 27, 1868, Longfellow sailed from New York for Liverpool in the steamer Russia, with a large family party, including his son and his son's bride, his three young daughters...

Longfellow had always a ready faculty for grouping his shorter poems in volumes, and had a series continuing indefinitely under the name of "Birds of Passage," which in successi...

And yet, my dear Eliza, in a few days, and we shall all be gone, and others sorrowing and rejoicing as we now do, will have taken our places: and we shall say, how childish it w...