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Image of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most widely known and best-loved American poets of the 19th century. He achieved a level of national and international prominence previously unequaled in the literary history of the United States and is one of the few American writers honored in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey—in fact, he is believed to be the first as his bust was installed there in 1884. Poems such as “Paul Revere’s Ride,” Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847), and “A Psalm of Life” were mainstays of primary and secondary school curricula, long remembered by generations of readers who studied them as children. Longfellow’s achievements in fictional and nonfictional prose, in a striking variety of poetic forms and modes, and in translation from many European languages resulted in a remarkably productive and influential literary career. His celebrity in his own time, however, has yielded to changing literary tastes and to reactions against the genteel tradition of authorship he represented. Even if time has proved him something less than the master poet he never claimed to be, Longfellow made pioneering contributions to American literary life by exemplifying the possibility of a successful authorial career, by linking American poetry to European traditions beyond England, and by developing a surprisingly wide readership for Romantic poetry. Born on February 27, 1807, in Portland (while Maine was still a part of Massachusetts), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in the thriving coastal city he remembered in “My Lost Youth” (1856) for its wharves and woodlands, the ships and sailors from distant lands who sparked his boyish imagination, and the historical associations of its old fort and an 1813 offshore naval battle between American and British brigs. His father, Stephen Longfellow, was an attorney and a Harvard graduate active in public affairs. His mother, Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow, was the daughter of General Peleg Wadsworth, who had served in the American Revolution. She named this second son among her eight children for her brother, Henry Wadsworth, who had died in Tripoli harbor in 1804. The family occupied the first brick house in Portland, built by the general and still maintained as a literary shrine to its most famous occupant. Henry began his schooling at age three, when he and his older brother, Stephen, enrolled in the first of several private schools in which they prepared for entrance to Bowdoin College. Aside from a leg injury that nearly resulted in amputation when he was eight, Henry apparently enjoyed his school friendships and outdoor recreation both in Portland and at his Grandfather Wadsworth’s new home in Hiram, Maine. His father’s book collection provided literary models of a neoclassical sort, and family storytelling acquainted him with New England lore dating to pilgrim days. The boy’s first publication, appearing in the November 17, 1820 Portland Gazette and signed simply “Henry,” drew on local history for a melancholy four-quatrain salute to warriors who fell at “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond.” A family friend’s dismissal of the piece as both “stiff” and derivative may have discouraged Henry’s ambition for the time. Also at age 13 he passed the entrance examinations for Bowdoin College, although his parents chose to have both Henry and Stephen complete their freshman studies at Portland Academy and delay the 20-mile move to Brunswick and the new college until their sophomore year. Summarized by © lakhasly.com.

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