Mark Twain

Literature / Writers Datebook: November 30

 

Brief biography of Mark Twain, American children's writer, famous for the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and Mark Twain quotes.  

 

 

 

Children's writer and humorist Mark Twain is a fixture in American literature. He was a humorous writer who created two famous characters, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He is also known for his travel book The Innocents Abroad.  

Through his two most popular and loved novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain captured his boyhood escapades along the Mississippi River.  He was one of my favourite authors as a child. He lived life the way he wanted to live and passed on amazing lines of knowledge through his books. Who can't love his stories about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? ... The joys of childhood when the world is full of wonders and children are free of the heavy responsibilities of adulthood.

Early Life of Samuel Clemens

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, the fifth of six children. The family was poor and his father suffered ill health. In 1839 they moved to Hannibal, a rapidly growing town in the Mississippi River, and there, Twain went to the local school.

When he was 12, his father died. Twain had to leave school to find work in which he apprenticed to a printer. At age 22, he became a river pilot at a time when there were a thousand or so boats a day on the Mississippi River. For four years, he enjoyed and loved his trade, but the American Civil War ended the river traffic.

Writing Career as Mark Twain

After the war, he became a full-time journalist in 1862, and soon began to use the pen name Mark Twain. At the age of 32, he published his first important story, and two years later, published his first successful novel, the humorous travel book The Innocents Abroad. It told the story of an excursion of American pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Twain's Marriage and the Adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer

In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon, with whom he had five children. He wrote his classic children's stories, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in his 40s. Twain had become increasingly disillusioned by modern life and personal tragedies, and the books provided an opportunity for him to relive his boyhood  'golden days' on the Mississippi.

Both stories, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,   give a realistic picture of life around the Mississippi and are full of adventure and humor. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, considered his masterpiece, is noted for its accurate and sympathetic depiction of adolescent life.   

Twain's Later Life

His later life was plagued with several financial problems. He was also pained by declining health and the death of his favorite daughter. 

Mark Twain is regarded as a major literary figure in American history, with his classic books loved worldwide. He died at the age of 74, in Redding, Connecticut, April 21, 1910.  

Mark Twain Books

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, 1867

The Innocents Abroad, 1869

Roughing It, 1872

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884

Pudd'nhead Wilson: a Tale, 1894

 

Suggested interesting link: 

Mark Twain Quotations, Newspaper Collections, & Related Resources. Barbara Schmidt.  Accessed November 2010.

Photo Credit:

Mark Twain.  Wikipedia Commons. / Public Domain   A portrait of the American writer Mark Twain taken by A. F. Bradley in New York, 1907.

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994

McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002

Ousby, Ian, Ed. The Cambridge Literature in English. Cambridge: CUP, 1993

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997

 

(c) November 2010. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.  

Saul Bellow

Literature / Writers Datebook: June 10

 

Brief biography of American novelist and teacher Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize for literature in 1976. Considered one of America's finest writers. Famous for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog and Humboldt's Gift. Considered

 

Early Life

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915, the son of immigrant Russian Jews from St. Petersburg. Bellow's father was a businessman, who was not always successful. The young Bellow spent his childhood in Montreal, and in 1924, when he was nine, his father moved the family to the United States, in Chicago.  Bellow, who spoke English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish, grew up, went to school and attended university in Chicago, and later, in Evanston, Illinois.

 

The Writer, Teacher, and Merchant Marine

After graduating at the age of 21, he decided to become a writer, and abandoned his post-graduate studies at Wisconsin University. By this time Bellow had married and needed to earn money. He began working as a teacher and helped compile the literature section of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as writing novels.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine. He used this experience as the basis for his first novel, Dangling Man, published when Bellow was 29. It is about the thoughts and feelings of a man waiting to be drafted into the army. After the war Bellow returned to his life of teaching and writing. He become an American citizen in 1941.

 

Writing Theme and Criticism

Bellow often writes about people who feel that they do not belong in the world they live in, who feel that they are outsiders and do not fit in to the present environment full of absurdity and chaos as opposed to the intellectually and emotionally nourishing past. For this he was criticized by his detractors as conventional still clinging to the European novels of the 19^th century. Many of his stories are both sad and funny at the same time. Typical of this is his novel Humboldt's Gift, a comic book about death that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

 

Awards and Distinctions

He has won many awards for his work, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1998. He became an associate professor at Minnesota University, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 1948, after which he traveled to Europe, in Paris and Rome.

He died at the age of 89, in Massachusetts, USA, on April 5, 2005.

 

Works by Saul Bellow

Dangling Man, 1944

The Victim, 1947

Adventures of Augie March, 1953

Seize the Day, 1956

Henderson the Rain King, 1959

Herzog, 1964

Mr Sammler's Planet, 1970

Humboldt's Gift, 1975

The Dean's December, 1982

More Die of Heartbreak, 1987

The Actual, 1997

 

Photo Credit:

Saul Bellow.   Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Photo portrait of Bellow from the dust jacket of Herzog (1964).

 

Resources:

Chambers Biographical Dictionary, New Edition, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse plc, 1994

 

(c) June 2010. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

Gertrude Stein

Literature / Writers Datebook: February 3

American Avant-Garde Author and Poet   

 

Brief biography of American writer Gertrude Stein, famous for Three Lives and the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

American writer and poet Gertrude Stein is considered on of the great authors of the United States. She is best known for the phrase "A rose is a rose is a rose" and famous for her books Three Lives and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

 

 

 

Even though she lived most of her life in Paris, Gertrude Stein is an important figure in American literature, primarily significant in the development of modern art and literature. The famous phrase "A rose is a rose is a rose" was written by Stein as part of the 1913 poem "Sacred Emily" meant to be a woman's name. Later, Stein used variations on the phrase in her other writings, the phrase often interpreted as "things are what they are."    

Early Life of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania on February 3, 1874, and lived in Austria and France as a child. Her father had become wealthy through his investments in street railroads and real estate. She studied at Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins University, where she was a medical student.

Life in Paris

Stein was devoted to her artistic brother Leo Stein, and when he went to live in Paris, she deliberately failed her exams in order to leave university and be with him. In Paris they established a famous salon in 27 rue de Fleurus – a kind of private club where intellectuals and artists met to discuss ideas in art and politics.

Paris with Great Artists

These were most exciting times in Paris, in which artists such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were experimenting with new forms of painting. Stein wanted to create a literary version of the new art. Three Lives, Stein's first novel and her first attempt to achieve this new form of literature, was published when she was 35.

Life with Alice B. Toklas after Leo

Stein and her brother Leo gradually parted ways to live their own lives. Another American woman writer living in Paris, Alice B. Toklas, moved in with Stein in 1907 and became her lifelong companion. Their apartment was a center of Parisian culture in the years between the two World Wars.

Prominent fellow-writer friends

Aside from the French artists, important American writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway were Stein's regular visitors. She wrote about those times in her experimental book The Making of Americans.

Last Years

She died in 1946 from stomach cancer, aged 72. Stein has a monument in New York, on the upper terrace of Bryant Park.   

Legacy

Gertrude Stein is credited with bringing the term "Lost Generation" into use. During the 1930s, Stein and Toklas became famous with the 1933 mass-market publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. She and Alice had an extended lecture tour in the United States during this decade.

 

Works by Gertrude Stein

Three Lives, 1909

The Making of Americans, 1925

Lucy Church Amiably, 1930

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Four Saints in Three Acts, 1934

Lectures in America, 1935

Wars I have Seen, 1945

Browsie and Willie, 1946

The Mother of Us All, 1947 (published after she died)

 

Photo Credit:

Gertrude Stein. NNDB.com / Public Domain

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)   

 

(c) February 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.   

Henry David Thoreau

Literature / Writer's Datebook: July 13

Brief biography of Henry David Thoreau. American writer, naturalist, political activist, critic,  transcendentalist, famous for his book Walden and essay on Civil Disobedience.  

 

 American author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), is known for transcendentalism, a belief in the individual, and for his strong political views. He is the author of the famous Walden or Life in the Woods and the essay "Civil Disobedience." He was greatly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and British writer Thomas Carlyle.  

 

Early Life of Henry David Thoreau

David Henry Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, US, the son of a pencil maker, John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar. His paternal grandfather was of French origin.  Named after his paternal uncle, David Thoreau, he became Henry David after although, although he never petitioned to make it legal.   

Thoreau was educated a Harvard University when he was just 16. He graduated in 1837, at 20  years old, the same year that Ralph Waldo Emerson gave his famous address urging American scholars to create a new culture separate from European influences. Thoreau became a good friend and follower of Emerson.

 

Simple Life at Walden Pond

At 27, he built a small cabin on Walden Pond near Concord, where he lived alone for over two years. He wrote about his time there, recording his daily thoughts and activities and described the environment going on around the pond.  These observations and reflections became the source of one of his most important works, Walden, published when he was 37. 

The book, however, went beyond just an observation for it had a message, a call for people to live simple lives, in harmony with nature and no surpluses of unwanted possessions.

 

Thoreau's Essay "Civil Disobedience"

When Thoreau was 29, he was imprisoned briefly for refusing to pay his taxes, which he did to express his opposition to slavery. This event in his life prompted him to write his essay "Civil Disobedience," in which he explained his belief that the government exists for the people, and therefore the people are more important.

 

Thoreau's Legacy

 The beliefs and ideologies of Henry David Thoreau, most especially the importance of an individual and simple living, were great influence to 20^th century prominent reformers who later adopted them, for example, Martin Luther King, who used them in his 1960s civil rights movement, Mahatma Gandhi (India), and Leo Tolstoy (Russia.)  Thoreau died at the age of 44, on May 6, 1862.

 

Books by Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849

"Civil Diosobedience," Essay, 1849

Walden, 1858 (Life in the Woods)

Cape Cod, 1865 (published after he died)

A Yankee in Canada, 1866 (published after he died)

Summer, 1884

Winter, 1887

 

Image Credit:

Henry David Thoreau. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.  

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994  

The Cambridge Literature in English, New Edition, edited by Ian Ousby, Cambridge, 1993

 

(c) July 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Literature / Writers Datebook: July 4

Brief biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and short story writer. He is best known for his four major romances: The Marble Faun, The Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, and most importantly, The Scarlet Letter. He also wrote some popular books for children.

Early Life

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804. Born to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning, his ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College, where he knew Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the 14th president of the US, Franklin Pierce. 

Between the ages of 21 and 35 Hawthorne lived in seclusion, writing short stories. Unfortunately, he was unable to earn a living as a writer. He was forced to work in customhouses.  In 1842, when he was 38, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts, where he met the transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.   

The Novelist and The Scarlet Letter

At 46 years old, Hawthorne published his famous masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter.  This allegorical novel set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, tells the story of Hester Prynne, her husband Roger Chillingworth and her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, who was the father of her child. This work explores the effect of guilt, anxiety and sorrow on the minds of the three major characters.    

 

Career as a Novelist

The following year after the success of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne published The House of the Seven Gables, the story of a family cursed by one of the victims of the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. 

In 1853, then US President Franklin Pierce made Hawthorne consul in Liverpool. The post permitted him to travel in Italy, the setting of his last book The Marble Faun, a novel about the conflict between innocence and guilt.

Nathaniel Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864 aged 59 years old, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, USA. 

 

Hawthorne's Legacy

Hawthorne's influence as writer, thinker, and public figure in the 19^th-century America has suffused American literature for generations. His writings grapple with morality, the role of religion in American life, and what it means to reckon with an unquiet past, themes that span literature through the ages.

 

Books by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Fanshawe  1828

Twice-Told Tales  1837

Mosses from an Old Manse  1846

The Scarlet Letter  1850

The House of Seven Gables  1851

A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls  1851

Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys  1853

The Marble Faun  1860

 

Photo Credit:

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.  

 

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994  

Nathaniel Hawthorne.  en.wikipedia.org

The Cambridge Literature in English, New Edition, edited by Ian Ousby, Cambridge, 1993

 

(c) July 2009. Tel. July 4, 2023. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Pearl S. Buck

Literature / Writers Datebook: June 26

 

Brief biography of American novelist Pearl S. Buck, famous for The Good Earth

Pearl S Buck was a prolific novelist of remarkable intelligence. She earned three university degrees, adopted nine children of different nationalities, and wrote more than 80 books. A Pulitzer Prize winner, in 1938 she also became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature. 

 

Early Years of Pearl Buck

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. Her parents, Caroline and Absalom Sydenstricker, worked as Presbyterian missionaries in China, and the family moved there when she was only a few months old.

Being foreigners, their lives were sometimes in danger because many of the Chinese had become suspicious of foreigners for that matter. That was the time of the Boxer Rebellion or Boxer Movement, an uprising by members of the Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists against foreign influence. The campaign took place from November 1899 to September 7, 1901 under the Qing Dynasty in the final years of Manchu rule in China. The Bucks stayed on and lived among the local people.

 

Mid-Years: Education and Family

Buck learned to speak Chinese before English and she only returned to the United States until she was eighteen years old. After graduating from university, she moved back to China with her missionary husband, John Buck, who she married in 1917. They had one child, a daughter, who was born disabled.

 

Successful Author

Buck's first novel, East Wind: West Wind, was published when she was thirty-eight years old. A year later her most famous book, The Good Earth, followed. It is a novel about the struggles of a poor Chinese farmer and became a bestseller, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She was the first person from a Western country to write about Chinese people in a sympathetic and understanding way.

 

Later years

Following the breakdown of her marriage in 1934, she divorced her first husband, John, and returned to America, later remarrying her publisher, and setting up a charity to help disadvantaged Asian-American children. She died on March 6, 1973, aged 80.

 

Books by Pearl S. Buck

East Wind: West wind, 1930

The Good Earth, 1931

Sons, 1932

A House Divided, 1935

The Exile, 1936

Fighting Angel, 1936

Water Buffalo children, 1943

The Christmas Ghost, 1960

The Three Daughters of Madame Liang, 1969

 

Photo credit:

Pearl S. Buck. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.  Pearl Buck, c. 1950. Gelatin silver print of Pearl S. Buck, 26 Jun 1892 - 6 Mar 1973 by Clara Sipprell, 31 Oct 1885 - 27 Dec 1975. Accessed June 26, 2024.

Resources:

Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002

Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994  

 

(c) June 2009. Updated June 26, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Henry James

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 15

Brief biography of American writer and critic Henry James. He became a British citizen although he is still considered one of America's greatest writers and literary critics of the 19th and 20 centuries. He is best known  for consciousness and morality themes.    

 

 

Henry James (b. April 15, 1843 – d. February 28, 1916) is considered one of America's greatest writers. He is best known for the way he creates complex and detailed characters in his novels. He was greatly influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, and Ivan Turgenev.

Early life

James was born in New York City into a wealthy and prominent family. His father Henry James Senior was a well-known theological writer and lecturer, his brother William, a pioneer psychologist and philosopher, and her sister Alice, a diarist. The family moved frequently, and he became a roving youth who lived in France, Germany, England, and Switzerland. He also met Turgenev and Flaubert in Europe.

At age 19 he enrolled in the Harvard Law School but preferred reading literature to studying law. Two years later, he published his first story, A Passionate Pilgrim, and became a brilliant reviewer and contributor for literary journals. Only in his 20s, he was considered to be one of the country's finest short-story writers. 

Writing career

James travelled and settled in Europe (1875), the same year he wrote his first book Roderick Hudson. During his first years there he wrote novels that portrayed Americans living abroad in Europe. He was concerned with exploring the relationship between European and American cultures. The Portrait of a Lady (1881), one of his best stories from this period, is about a young American woman who visits England and Italy with her aunt. In the 1880s he began analysing social ills in novels such as The Bostonians and Princess Casamassima (1886), in which he probes the aspects of European political life.  The final stage of James's writing was devoted to combining the previous two themes by analyzing morality questions through the experiences of individuals. It was in this period that James published his greatest novels: The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

As brother of a philosopher William James, who coined the phrase "stream of consciousness",  Henry James could also describe what was "underneath the surface of things" yet remain neutral by not taking sides.  

Later Years

He made England his home primarily in London and Rye, Sussex. In 1915 he became a British citizen. Notably, at Rye, Sussex, James he became friends with HG Wells, the pioneer of science fiction and self-conscious reformer. The friendship turned sour when Wells attacked the Jamesian ethos in the novel Boon (1915).

In 1898, James moved to Rye House, Sussex where he wrote his last three novels.  In 1916, the same year he died, he also received the Order of Merit. He was 72.

His works include novels, stories, plays and thousands of pages of literary criticism.

 

Photo credit:

Henry James. NNDB / Public Domain 

Resources: 

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby. CUP, Cambridge, 1993
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una Mcgovern, Chambers Harrap, Edinburgh,  2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994

 

 

(c) April 2009. Tel. Inspire Pen Web. All rights reserved. 

Washington Irving

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 3

 

American Short-Story Writer famous for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle

 

 

 

Brief biography of writer Washington Irving, one of the first American authors to achieve international reputation with the success of  The Sketch Book. Washington Irving became a famous author for his humorous and satirical stories. He pioneered the establishment of short story writing in American literature, and wrote literary history and biography in later years.

 

Early Life 

Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783, in New York City, son of a wealthy merchant. He studied law privately but he did not pursue it as a career although he practised it briefly. He began his career writing satirical essays for newspapers, in particular in the Salmagundi Papers in 1807. 

 

Writing Career

Irving's print debut was in 1802 when he published a collection of nine observational letters, The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. He used the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. The letters first appeared in the November 15 edition of the New York Morning Chronicle, a political-leaning newspaper that time. The letters contained lampoon of the early 19th century New York society and culture. 

When he was 26, he published A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. He used the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar. The book was a social satire, a comic account of the early years of Dutch settlement in Manhattan, and it became part of New York folklore. It gained him wide acclaim.   

Eventually the word Knickerbocker was used to describe any New Yorker who could trace his/her family to the original Dutch settlers. In 1815, at the age of 32, he went to England where he lived for many years.  

 

The Sketch Book

When he was 37, he published his most successful book, The Sketch Book. It is a collection of essays and sketches on English folk customs, Native Americans, and legends from his childhood in New York State.

The book contains two of his most famous stories: "Rip Van Winkle", about a man who falls asleep for 20 years, and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow", in which the schoolmaster Ichabod Crane meets with a headless horseman.

With the success of The Sketch Book, Irving became a professional writer; he returned to New York in 1832 a literary hero. He died at the age of 76, November 28, 1859. Throughout the United States, there are many schools, hotels, and places taken in his fictional books.

 

Books by Washington Irving

A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, 1809

The Sketch Book, 1819-1820

Bracebridge Hall, 1822

Tales of a Traveller, 1824

History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1828

Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus, 1831

The Crayon Miscellany, 1835

The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, 1837

Biography and Poetical Remains of the Late Margaret Miller Davidson, 1841

George Washington (5 volumes), 1855-1859

 

Photo credit:

Irving Washington. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Daguerreotype of Washington Irving (modern copy by Mathew Brady, original by John Plumbe).

 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994

McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002

Ousby, Ian. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. Carlton, 1997.

 

(c) April 2009. Updated April 3, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Literature / Writers-Poets Datebook: February 27.

 

 

 

 

 

Brief biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and one of the fireside poets from New England. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and Evangeline".    

 

American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (b. February 27, 1807, Portland, Maine, USA - d. March 24, 1882, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA), wrote some of the famous poems in American literature.He was the first American to be honoured with a bust in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Early Years

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow traced his family back to the Plymouth Pilgrims.He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, where Nathaniel Hawthorne, famous writer of novels and short stories, had been his classmate.

Career

Longfellow spent his early career teaching foreign languages, first at Bowdoin College and later at Harvard University. He then concentrated on poetry.

Longfellow was one of the few American poets who was so popular in his day that he could support himself by writing. His private life was filled with sadness. His first wife died shortly after they were married, and his second wife was killed in a fire. It is no surprise that this sadness is reflected in many of his poems.

The famous poet  

Aged 32, Longfellow published his first book of verse, Voices of the Night. The book brought him wide public recognition. He published Ballads two years later. Ballads contains some of his famous poems, including 'The Village Blacksmith'.

Famous for his romantic storytelling, he became known for his long poems that use simple ideas telling stories based on American history and mythology. These include the well-known The Song of Hiawatha, a tale from Native-American legends; Evangeline, the story of the French exiles of France's colonies in North America; and The Courtship of Miles Standish, a romance set during the Pilgrim Father's early days.

Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Voices of the Night, 1839

Ballads, 1841

Evangeline, 1847

The Seaside and the Fireside, 1849

The Song of Hiawatha, 1855

The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858

Tales of a Wayside Inn (including 'Paul Revere's Ride'), 1863

Ultima Thule, 1880

 

Photo Credit:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868.

Resources:

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, by Ian Ousby (1993)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. en.wikipedia.org 

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring (1994)

 

(c) February 2009. Updated February 27, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.