Henry Wadsworth LongfellowBrendan Wu & Melaney Zranchev

Background Born: February 27, 1807 in

Portland, Maine Son of Stephen and Zilpah

Longfellow At the age of six, Henry

Longfellow showed a great propensity toward writing

At age 19, he graduated from Bowdoin College with classmate Nathaniel Hawthorne

He traveled throughout Europe for three years, preparing himself to for his new career as a college professor in modern languages

1831 Married Mary Storer Potter, but later died during a miscarriage

In 1836, he began teaching at Harvard University

1843 he married Frances Appleton and had six children together

His wife died tragically from being severely burned after her dress caught on fire

Longfellow’s famous beard conceals his scars, which he obtained when he attempted to save his wife from the fire

He translated Dante’s Devine Comedy as means of comfort

He died on March 24, 1882 from peritonitis

Mary Storer Potter, Longfellow’s first

wifeFanny Appleton

Longfellow, with sons Charles and Ernest

Frances Appleton, Longfellow’s second

wife

Significant WorksPoetry:

Evangeline (1847)

The Seaside and Fireside (1849)

The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1860)

Three Books of Song (1872)

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

Other Works:

Dante’s Divine Comedy of

Alighieri (poetry in translation)

Hyperion: A Romance (Fiction)

Kavanagh: A Tale (Fiction)

The Spanish Student (Drama)

Poets and Poetry of Europe

(poetry in translation)

Literary PeriodRomanticism

A style of writing that came about in the late 18th century.

It focuses on the natural world, and on abstract ideas of

imagination, on love, death, nature, and freedom

Romantic style values feelings and intuition over reasoning

The themes in most of Longfellow’s poems tend to use the

Romantic writing style through the actions of characters

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

  A gentle face — the face of one long dead—

Looks at me from the wall, where round its

head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing

scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Analysis of Poem This poem reflects the grief and agony of Longfellow as he remembers the tragic incident of

his wife’s death. Her dress caught fire as she was sealing a locket of her daughter's hair (a

far more popular keepsake in the 19th century than later), and Longfellow was severely

burned as he put out the flames but failed to save her life. It is probably a testament to his

will that her gentle face (line 2) appears as he must have so often seen it during their 19-

year marriage instead of in the agonized aftermath of her "martyrdom by fire" (line

6). Although the poet saw only a picture of the Colorado mountain with its cruciform snow-

filled crevices, he liked the image so well that he took it as emblematic of his circumstances.

As her death occurred in July 1861, internal evidence ("I carried this cross eighteen years,"

line 13) dates the composition of the poem as 1879. As an image, the cross "upon [his]

breast" (line 11) suggests the white welts that can scar a burn victim, but it reminds him not

of her death but of her life in much the same way that the Christian cross represents not the

death of Christ but his life and the promise of Resurrection. Instead of reminding him of her

suffering, the pristine snow brings to mind her purity.

Longfellow’s Inspiration

“Longfellow’s sonnet “The Cross of Snow” was inspired by two images familiar to Longfellow. One was Fanny’s portrait by Samuel Worcester Rowse (1859) and the other was an engraving of Jackson’s photograph of the “Mountain of the Holy Cross” (1875). This engraving showed a striking natural phenomenon in the Rocky Mountains; snow- filled crevices on the side of a mountain in the Rockies projected the image of a cross which could be seen from many miles away. Because the crevices were so high on the mountain, the crevices remained snow-filled year around. In the mid 1800’s few Easterners, including Longfellow, had visited the Rocky Mountains, and such an image created much interest back East.” (Willink, Mary)Mountain of the Holy

CrossFannie Appleton

Longfellow

Literary Criticism“During his lifetime, Longfellow was immensely popular and widely admired. He was the first American poet to gain a favorable international reputation, and his poetry was praised abroad by such eminent authors as Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Alfred Tennyson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman. In the decades that followed, however, the idealism and sentimentality that characterize much of his verse fell out of favor with younger poets and critics who were beginning to embrace realism and naturalism. Longfellow's literary reputation further declined in the twentieth century with the advent of Modernism. Reviled as superficial and didactic, his poetry was largely dismissed and received little further critical attention.”

“Longfellow is classified with others in Fields's Houghton-Mifflin stable as one of those authors used to impose a presumed "high culture" of English Puritan origins on subsequent generations and immigrant populations, even though Longfellow might also be recognized as one whose broadly inclusive responsiveness to European traditions could have smoothed assimilation for the children of newcomers from central and southern Europe. In many ways Longfellow may be read as a friend of American multiculturalism. His reputation could also benefit from renewed critical respect for sentimentalism, especially as that respect gets extended to male authors." 

Literary Criticism

“Longfellow gave poetry higher standing within American society than it had enjoyed ever before, not only by exemplifying the appeal of graceful, informed writing to an exceptionally wide reading audience but also by making art itself one of his centering themes. In an age that judged literature largely in moral terms as expressive of an author's personal virtues, Longfellow became everyman's kindly, sympathizing, gently encouraging friend. At present, however, Longfellow has been relegated to the status of an historically interesting minor poet whose poems occupy only a few pages in recent anthologies and do so in ways that obscure the reasons for his original popularity.”

Literary Criticism

Achievements More than a million copies of his poetry had been sold.

Granted private audiences with Queen Victoria

Granted honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge

Became the first American to be honored a memorial in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey--a distinction reserved for the greatest English poets

In America, a national holiday was declared to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday

From the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, nearly every school-age child in the United States and most of Britain were required to read some of his poetry.

Longfellow’s memorial in the Poets’ Corner of

Westminster Abbey

Longfellow’s Birthplace: Portland, Maine

The first Longfellow stamp, issued in

Portland on February 16, 1940

Longfellow and Senator Charles

Sumner

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• Irmscher, Christoph. Longfellow Redux. University of Illinois, 2006

Bibliography 

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Famous People. thefamouspeople. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 May 2012. <http: www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-186.php>.

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LaRocco, Jeremiah. "Mount of the Holy Cross." Wikipedia. N.p., 2012. Web. 9 May 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_of_the_Holy_Cross,_2009.jpg>.

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