Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American, 1807-1882)
One of the most influential American poets of the nineteenth century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine to a well-established family and rose to national literary prominence by the 1850s. He was a traveler, linguist, and romantic deeply ingrained in the American culture and history that fueled his imagination.
Longfellow graduated in 1825 from Bowdoin College and was a professor at Harvard University. He produced several pieces of epic poetry centered on extraordinary deeds and occurrences. With the release of Evangeline (1847), a sentimental narrative poem about the British driving out of the French from Acadia in Canada from 1755 to1764, he became well-known across the country. By the time of his death, he had achieved global fame.
