Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was raised in a Puritan family with three brothers and four sisters. While growing up he kept a good relationship with his family members. Longfellow spent many years in foreign countries to further his horizons. Longfellow’s solitary life style would not be expected from his extreme success in poetry (Williams, p.26).
Longfellow’s boyhood home was built by his grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, in 1784-86, and was the first brick house in Portland. As a memorial to the poet, the house is still standing today. Then the house was by the seaside, where Longfellow could hear the rhythmic roar of the ocean. Probably much of his writing for his rhythms in his writing came through his listening to the wind and waves. Longfellow always visited there, especially up to the time of his father’s death in 1849 (Williams, 29).
The life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was a mixture of triumph and tragedy, fulfillment and disappointment. His youthful ambitions were all literary, but to please his father he became a teacher. During the eight years he taught language at Bowdoin College and eighteen years at Harvard, he never quit writing. Thirteen of his books were published, including Evangeline (1847), the Poems on Slavery (1842), and The Golden Legend (1851). Longfellow also wrote poems about is family (Evangeline, preface). Longfellow’s six children...

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