- the most popular poet America has ever produced - his reputation today is based on a handful of poems so familiar that they are part of our national heritage - there was a time when every schoolchild in America knew some of the opening lines of his poems (ex: “Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere) - born in Portland, Maine; came from a cultured and well-to-do family Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ( )

- classmate of Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin College (in Maine) - interested in foreign language and literature; studied in Europe - during a European trip in 1835, his young wife died of a miscarriage - began to teach at Harvard - 7 years later he married again; lived in a Cambridge mansion called the Craigie House - produced some of his most celebrated poetry during this period; by 1854 his poetry was bringing him enough income that he resigned from Harvard to devote himself to writing

- his wife died in a fiery accident at home - 12 years after his death, a marble statue of his image was unveiled in the Poet’s Corner in London’s Westminster Abbey; 1st American to be so honored