When was henry wadsworth longfellow

Reviewers and editors in the newspapers and magazines took sides, often not merely on literary but on ideological grounds. The questions that concerned the critics—was Longfellow original or derivative, was he "American" enough or too European, was he "in touch" or was he too cloistered, were his metrical choices fitting? At the beginning of his career, for instance, Longfellow signified to many readers a welcome relaxation of the famously severe New England outlook, while for others he introduced an unwelcome note of European cosmopolitanism.

By his career's end, in Victorian America, he seemed to many a stable, authoritative bulwark against accelerating change, while for others he was a staid emblem of an outmoded era. While the critics were battling it out, the public took Longfellow into their hearts. To his middleclass readers Longfellow meant not only social prestige, intellectual distinction, and moral authority, but the three together filtered through a noble but at the same time somehow approachable life, and contributing to a radiant personal aura inseparable from his poems.

When the best-selling anthologist Thomas Bulfinch, for instance, wrote to Longfellow in seeking permission to dedicate his Age of Fable to him "as a sort of guarantee to the public that nothing worthless or mischievous is offered to them," he was paying homage to the way Longfellow had become not just an author but an icon, embodying impeccable honor and uprightness.

Similarly, the writer Mary Austin, growing up on the prairies of Illinois, recalled later that her parents treasured their volume of Longfellow's poetry for "the notion of mannerliness, of the gesture they missed and meant on behalf of their children, to resume"; for these transplanted New Englanders who had settled in the West, Longfellow represented a sought-after ideal of civility and civilization.

Still, there were those who interpreted Longfellow more darkly: the South, especially in the years before the Civil War, tended to see in Longfellow an example of New England snobbery and hypocrisy.

But even so, a "Longfellow Debating Society" was established in Clarksville, Tennessee in , and a "Longfellow Dramatic Association" was founded in Baltimore in Other such Longfellow-inspired literary organizations proliferated in the decades following the Civil War, in such far-flung places as Cumberland County, Kentucky; Wheeling, West Virginia; and San Francisco.

Despite or perhaps as a result of such expressions of Longfellow's sanctioning authority, he increasingly seemed a symbol of an oppressive cultural conservatism. The American poet Sidney Lanier left upon his death in numerous fragments and sketches for poems, one of which reads in its entirety, "Do you think the 19th century is past?

It is but two years since Boston burnt me for witchcraft. I wrote a poem which was not orthodox: that is, not like Mr. The rise of Modernist poets and theorists like T. Eliot and Ezra Pound in the first decades of the twentieth century finally did Longfellow in. The country had changed and so had its literary aesthetics, and Longfellow now seemed naive, sentimental, and out of touch with the hard facts of life.

Opening a new chapter in his meta-life as a symbol, in the twentieth century Longfellow came to seem, in fact, not just an author whose star had waned but the very embodiment of facile, flaccid nineteenth-century poetizing; his poetry was a disaster, in this view, and his former popularity an embarrassment.

Within the space of a couple decades, that is, Longfellow had gone from one of the most lauded poets who ever lived to one of the most disparaged. Suddenly now he seemed to stand for everything wrong with nineteenth-century American genteel poetry and "respectable" culture. Such a reversal in reputation, in retrospect, may be seen as yet further evidence of Longfellow's immense purity and power as a symbol, with a constantly evolving value and meaning, as if Longfellow himself and his poetry were peculiarly open to widely divergent cultural interpretation and reinterpretation.

After decades of relative neglect, a new reinterpretation of Longfellow is currently taking place among poets, critics, and the general public. McClatchey's Library of America edition of Longfellow, published in , suggests that Longfellow has the power to attract a new generation of readers.

Literary critics, too, have been taking a new look at Longfellow in his social and historical context, finding ways to rescue his poetry from the critical oblivion in which it languished for much of the twentieth century.

Longfellow is now the subject of scholarly articles, biographies, and even historical novels, and such activity — if history is any guide — betokens the arrival of yet another phase in Longfellow's always contested fame.

Show 10 40 per page. Explore This Park. Info Alerts Maps Calendar. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Portrait of Longfellow by Cephas Thompson, Introduction Longfellow is one of the monumental cultural figures of nineteenth-century America, the nation's preeminent poet in his era, whose verse is notable for its lyric beauty, its gentle moralizing, and its immense popularity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, c. Poetry The nature of Longfellow's poetic genius is elusive, hard to pin down, though it may help to recall that first and foremost he was a public poet. Henry W. Longfellow, photographed by Mathew Brady, Life and Fame Longfellow's benign poetic temperament owes much to his full and fortunate life.

His breakthrough poem, "A Psalm of Life," published in the Knickerbocker magazine out of New York and reprinted in newspapers across the country, stirred a generation of readers with its heady exhortations: Life is real! Longfellow, Longfellow in 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 , 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. Later, he produced its first American translation.

Tales of a Wayside Inn, largely written before his wife's death, was published in When the Civil War ended in , 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.

From to , Longfellow published seven more books of poetry, and his seventy-fifth birthday in was celebrated across the country. But his health was failing, and he died the following month, on March 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. National Poetry Month. Materials for Teachers Teach This Poem. Poems for Kids. Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Due to budget cuts, he covered many of the teaching positions himself. One of the early practitioners of self-marketing, Longfellow expanded his audience becoming one of the best-selling authors in the world. In the last 20 years of his life, Longfellow continued to enjoy fame with honors bestowed on him in Europe and America.

Longfellow also experienced more sorrow in his personal life. In , a house fire killed his wife, Fanny, and that same year, the country was plunged into the Civil War.

His young son, Charley, ran off to fight without his approval. In March , Longfellow had developed severe stomach pains caused by acute peritonitis. With the aid of opium and his friends and family who were with him, he endured the pain for several days before succumbing on March 24, Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter, also from a distinguished family.

Before he began at Harvard, they traveled to northern Europe. While in Germany, Mary died following a miscarriage, in Devastated, Longfellow returned to the United States seeking solace.

He turned to his writing, channeling his personal experiences into his work. He soon published the romance novel Hyperion , where he unabashedly told of his unrequited love for Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his first wife died.

After seven years, they married in and would go on to have six children.