Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Born in Portland, Maine on February 27, 1807, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the son of Zilpah Wadsworth and Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer. He attended private schools and entered Bowdoin College at age 15, graduating in 1825. His early exposure to literature and his family’s intellectual environment set him on a path toward academic and poetic pursuits.

Longfellow’s literary career began with his first published poem in his youth, but his breakout came with Evangeline 1847, a narrative poem that captured the American public’s imagination. He followed with The Song of Hiawatha 1855, written in trochaic tetrameter, and The Courtship of Miles Standish 1858. His works were adapted into films such as The Wreck of the Hesperus 1948, and he was credited as a writer for Temple of Our Fathers.

Longfellow married Mary Storer Potter in 1831; she died in 1835. In 1843 he married Frances Elizabeth Appleton, with whom he had six children: Alice Mary, Ernest Wadsworth, Edith, Frances, Charles Appleton, and Annie Longfellow Thorp. Frances died in 1861 from burns. Longfellow lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until his death on March 24, 1882.

Longfellow’s works, such as Evangeline and The Song of Hiawatha, were household names for generations. He was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in its inaugural 1900 class and honored on US postage stamps in 1940 and 2007. He is most remembered for his narrative poems that combined romanticism with American themes, making literature accessible to a broad audience.