What did Longfellow write about?
Longfellow’s popularity seemed to grow, as did his collection of works. He wrote about a multitude of subjects: slavery in Poems on Slavery, literature of Europe in an anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe, and American Indians in The Song of Hiawatha.
What is the meaning of Longfellow?
a writer of poems (the term is usually reserved for writers of good poetry)
What is the main message of the poem A Psalm of Life?
The poem is a message to future generations to find work that gives them purpose and passion. “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes the purpose of life and explains how one should handle the sorrow and struggles along the way.
Where was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow born and raised?
Born in Portland in 1807, when that bustling port city was still part of Massachusetts, Longfellow came from an old, established family of lawyers, judges, and generals.
How did Henry Longfellow feel about his readers?
Longfellow always felt himself dutifully answerable to his readers – he was a poet, quite literally, with a known address – and this sense of public obligation shaped his poetry and his life in fundamental ways.
What did Julia Willard write to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow?
One reader, a Mrs. Julia Willard, captured the experience of many when she wrote Longfellow, late in his life, “Your beautiful poems have been a rest, a blessing, a sweet, pure, calming benediction to me ever since I learned to read them in my childhood years.”
Why did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow turn down the professorship?
While in Spain, Longfellow was saddened to learn that his favorite sister Elizabeth had died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 that May. On August 27, 1829, he wrote to the president of Bowdoin that he was turning down the professorship because he considered the $600 salary “disproportionate to the duties required”.