Nineteenth-century poet and writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s achievements in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction established him as one of the most well-loved literary figures of his time. His work was translated into many languages, and his depictions of American life and its traditions established him an American cultural icon.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. He was the second son of eight children in a prominent family. Longfellow’s maternal grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, was a Revolutionary War hero, and Longfellow’s father, Stephen Longfellow, was a successful lawyer who served as a U.S. Congressman. During his youth, Longfellow attended the Portland Academy. At the age of thirteen, he published his first poem, “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond” in the “Portland Gazette,” and the lack of praise he received left him discouraged. Also at the age of thirteen, he passed the necessary examinations to become a student at Bowdoin College. After graduating in 1825, he went to Europe for three years, where he studied French, Italian, Spanish, and German to prepare for a professorship at Bowdoin.

While at Bowdoin, Longfellow spent a significant portion of time producing teaching materials. He also translated poetry and prose and wrote a number of essays on Spanish, Italian, and French literature. In 1831, he married his first wife, Mary Storer Potter and published his first book, Outre Mer (“Overseas”) which is a description of his European travels inspired by Washington Irving’s travel sketches. Longfellow was offered the Smith Professorship of Modern Languages at Harvard College in 1834, and traveled to Europe a second time to further sharpen his language skills, this time studying Scandinavian languages as well as German language and literature. While in Europe, Longfellow’s first wife suffered a miscarriage and died due to resultant complications.

In 1836, Longfellow returned to the U.S. to begin an eighteen-year professorship at Harvard, the most productive period of his literary career. In 1839 Longfellow published his first collection of poetry, Voices of the Night, which contained “The Light of the Stars,” “The Psalm of Light,” and “Hymn to the Night,” and saw immediate popularity. This was followed by the novel Hyperion, a semi-autobiographical novel which romanticizes Longfellow’s European travels as well as his failed attempts at courting Fanny Appleton. The combined success of Voices of the Night followed by Hyperion established Longfellow’s reputation as one of the leading writers in America at the time. He earned the respect and praise of his contemporaries. Of Longfellow’s writing, American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne stated: “nothing equal to some of them was ever written in this world.”

After many years of disinterest, Fanny Appleton finally agreed to marry Longfellow in 1843, and the couple eventually raised six children. Both Longfellow and his wife were interested in the arts, music, and books, and their social standing made Fanny the first woman in America to be administered anesthesia during childbirth in 1847. Longfellow continued to write on a number of diverse topics. Noteably, his Poems on Slavery (1842) expressed his ardent antislavery sentiments. He also saw great success from his sentimental narrative poem, Evangeline (1847). In the poem, two lovers, Gabriel and Evangeline are tragically separated when the British soldiers removed French colonists from the territory that is now Nova Scotia. The lovers are only reunited many years later as Gabriel is dying. Following its publication, Evangeline reached nearly every single literate American household.

Longfellow left his position as a professor at Harvard in 1854, a move which allowed him to further invest himself in his writing. It was during this time that he produced some of his most notable works. In 1855, he published The Song of Hiawatha, which follows the story of its titular character on a journey to becoming the leader of the Ojibwa Indian people. The Song of Hiawatha is known for its singsong meter, which is frequently parodied. In 1863, Longfellow published Tales of a Wayside Inn, inspired by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The first poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride” became a call for American courage in the face of the Civil War, and is considered among Longfellow’s most significant works. The folk ballad was written in anapestic tetrameter to evoke the sounds of a horse galloping. Though it is not a historically accurate account of Paul Revere’s “midnight ride” to warn the American colonists about the British presence, it helped to transform Revere into an American legend.

Following the end of the Civil War, Longfellow‘s prolific years of writing largely came to a halt, largely due to his suffering at the tragic loss of his wife Fanny, when she succumbed to wounds sustained after her dress caught on fire, accidently, in 1861. However, by this point, Longfellow was widely viewed as the most famous American of his time. After not publishing any new material for several years while he grieved, Longfellow published a total of seven more volumes of poetry from 1866 to 1880. He died in 1882, just after his seventy-fifth birthday. In 1884, he became the first American to receive a memorial bust in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Longfellow was a master of romantic,melancholic writing and possessed great metrical finesse, yet critics often state that he did not quite capture the American spirit in the same way as his contemporary, Walt Whitman. Still, Longfellow had a great impact on American culture and many pieces of his writing are considered key elements of American heritage. When commenting on Longfellow’s death, Walt Whitman wrote, “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.”