Short biography of hw longfellow jr

What is longfellow most famous for?

The sentimental appealing to the emotions poems of the American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made him an extremely popular author at home and in other countries in the nineteenth century. As the son of a prominent lawyer, Henry was expected to have a similar profession as an adult. He was an excellent student whose skill in learning foreign languages led the trustees persons appointed to administer the affairs of an institution at Bowdoin of which his father was one to offer the young graduate a professorship of modern languages.

He prepared himself further with study abroad in Europe , at his own expense, before undertaking his duties. When he started his new position he had to create his own textbooks, because the study of modern languages was such a new field. During Longfellow's three years in Europe his lifelong harmony with Old World European civilization was firmly established.

He returned home in and two years later married Mary Storer Potter. In he published Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage beyond the Sea, a collection of picturesque forming a pleasing picture travel essays modeled after Washington Irving 's — Sketch Book. He did not start his new job until , after he had completed a tour of European and Scandinavian northern European countries.

Henry wadsworth longfellow cause of death

During this trip his wife died. While staying at Heidelberg , Germany , he came under the spell of the works of the German romantic poet Novalis — Novalis's moody, mystical pertaining to a spiritual event nocturnalism pertaining to the night struck a responsive chord in the grieving Longfellow. In Longfellow published the sentimental prose romance Hyperion and his first volume of poetry, Voices of the Night.

In Hyperion he rather indiscreetly lacking sound judgment told the story of his courtship of Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe soon after his wife's death. They were married in Her father, a wealthy Boston, Massachusetts, merchant, gave them Craigie House as a wedding present.