Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", "A Psalm of Life", "The Song of Hiawatha", "Evangeline", and "Christmas Bells". He also wrote the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets. Longfellow was born and raised in the region of Portland, Maine. He attended university at an early age at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After several journeys overseas, Longfellow settled for the last forty-five years of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, to Stephen and Zilpah (Wadsworth) Longfellow in Portland, Maine, and grew up in what is now known as the Wadsworth-Longfellow House. His father was a lawyer, and his maternal grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, Sr., was a general in the American Revolutionary War. He was descended from the Longfellow family that came to America in 1676 from Yorkshire, England, and from Mayflower passengers Priscilla and John Alden, William Brewster, Henry Samson, John Howland, and Richard Warren on his mother's side, as well as Rev. John Lathrop.

Longfellow's siblings were Stephen (1805), Elizabeth (1808), Anne (1810), Alexander (1814), Mary (1816), Ellen (1818), and Samuel (1819). Longfellow was enrolled in a dame school at the age of only three, and by age six, when he entered the Portland Academy, he was able to read and write quite well.[citation needed] He remained at the Portland Academy until the age of fourteen and entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1822. At Bowdoin, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would later become his lifelong friend.

After graduating in 1825, he was offered a professorship at Bowdoin College with the condition that he first spend some time in Europe for further language study. He toured Europe between 1826 and 1829 (visiting England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain) and upon returning went on to become the first professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, as well as a parttime librarian[citation needed]. During his years at the college, he wrote textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish and a travel book, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. In 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter of Portland.

Longfellow was offered the Smith Professorship of French and Spanish at Harvard with the stipulation that he spend a year or so abroad. His 22-year old wife, Mary Storer Potter, died during the trip in Rotterdam after suffering a miscarriage in 1835. Three years later, he was inspired to write "Footsteps of Angels" about their love.

When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard University. He settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained for the rest of his life, although he spent summers at his home in Nahant. He began publishing his poetry, including "Voices of the Night" in 1839 and Ballads and Other Poems, which included his famous poem "The Village Blacksmith", in 1841.

Longfellow began courting Frances "Fanny" Appleton, the daughter of a wealthy Boston industrialist, Nathan Appleton. During the courtship, he frequently walked from Harvard to her home in Boston, crossing the Boston Bridge. That bridge was subsequently demolished and replaced in 1906 by a new bridge, which was eventually renamed as the Longfellow Bridge.

After seven years, Fanny finally agreed to marriage, and they were wed in 1843. Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie House, overlooking the Charles River as a wedding present to the pair. The house was occupied during the American Revolution by General George Washington and his staff.[5]

His love for Fanny is evident in the following lines from Longfellow's only love poem, the sonnet "The Evening Star", which he wrote in October, 1845: "O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus! My morning and my evening star of love!"

When the younger Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep administered the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States to Fanny Longfellow.

Longfellow retired from Harvard in 1854, devoting himself entirely to writing. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from Harvard in 1859.

Longfellow was a devoted husband and father with a keen feeling for the pleasures of home. But each of his marriages ended in sadness and tragedy.

On a hot July day, while Fanny was putting a lock of a child's hair into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax, her dress caught fire causing severe burns. She died the next day, aged 44, on July 10, 1861. Longfellow was devastated by her death and never fully recovered. The strength of his grief is still evident in these lines from a sonnet, "The Cross of Snow" (1879), which he wrote eighteen years later to commemorate her death:

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.

Longfellow died on March 24, 1882, after suffering from peritonitis for five days.

He is buried with both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1884 he was the first, and only American poet for whom a commemorative sculpted bust was placed in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Contemporary writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote to Longfellow in May 1841 of his "fervent admiration which [your] genius has inspired in me" and later called him "unquestionably the best poet in America". However, after Poe's reputation as a critic increased, he publicly accused Longfellow plagiarism in what has been since termed by Poe biographers as "The Longfellow War". His assessment was that Longfellow was "a determined imitator and a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people", specifically Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson. Poet Walt Whitman also considered Longfellow an imitator of European forms, though he praised his ability to reach a popular audience as "the expressor of common themes - of the little songs of the masses."

Longfellow was such an admired figure in the United States during his life that his 70th birthday in 1877 took on the air of a national holiday, with parades, speeches, and the reading of his poetry. He had become one of the first American celebrities.

His work was immensely popular during his time and is still today, although some modern critics consider him too sentimental. His poetry is based on familiar and easily understood themes with simple, clear, and flowing language. His poetry created an audience in America and contributed to creating American mythology.

Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells" is the basis for the Christmas carol "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".

His poem at the Jewish cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island, is one of his more popular works; it discusses Jewish history and immigration.

Longfellow's home in Cambridge, the Longfellow National Historic Site, is a U.S. National Historic Site, National Historic Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places. A two-thirds scale replica was built in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Minnehaha Park in 1906 and once served as a centerpiece for a local zoo.

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 febbraio 1807 – 24 marzo 1882) è stato uno scrittore statunitense, tra i primi letterati americani ad assurgere alla fama mondiale.

Longfellow fu il più famoso poeta della scena del New England nell''800 e scrisse numerose opere tra cui Evangeline e Il faro.

Fu un acceso promotore dell'abolizione della schiavitù negli anni prima e durante la Guerra Civile Americana insieme ad altri letterati che gravitavano nell'orbita di Harvard e soprattutto all'allora Governatore del Massachussets John Andrew.

Intorno al 1862 diede vita insieme ai letterati James Lowell, Oliver W. Holmes e George Washington Greene al cosidetto "Circolo Dante" atto a promuovere la conoscenza della Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri negli Stati Uniti. Insieme ai suoi colleghi del circolo, Longfellow ne portò a termine la prima traduzione americana in inglese nel 1867.

Da allora il successo dell'opera di Dante in America fu costante ed in seguito il Circolo diventò la "Dante Society", una delle più famose associazioni di dantisti nel mondo.

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