United States

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807–1882

Born in Portland, Maine, in 1807 and a professor of modern languages at Harvard, Longfellow was the most celebrated American poet of his century. Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline and “A Psalm of Life” are clear, musical narrative verse on loss, memory, faith and hope; he also translated Dante. He made poetry a central part of American culture, though later critics found him too conventional. He died in 1882.