Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; a Sketch of His Life

by Charles Eliot Norton

This literary volume was published in 1907.

The proposed commemoration, under the auspices of the
Cambridge Historical Society, on the 7th of February,
1907, of the one hundredth anniversary of Longfellow's
birthday, accounts for the character of this little volume.
Besides the sketch of the life of the Poet, it contains most
of those of his shorter poems which are referred to in the
narrative, and also those which liave a distinctly auto-
biographical character, and those which relate to his
special friends and to the places of his birth and abode.
Thus, the little book gives the story of the Poet's life
briery narrated in prose by a friend, and partially
recorded in verse by himself.

Contents:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: a Sketch of His Life

Autobiographical Poems

The Battle of Lovell's Pond (1820)

Prelude to Voices of the Night (1839)

A Psalm of Life (1838)

The Wreck of the Hesperus (1839)

The Village Blacksmith (1839)

To the River Charles (1841)

The Bridge (1845)

The Ropewalk (1854)

A Gleam of Sunshine (1846)

To a Child (1845)

The Open Window (1848)

In the Churchyard at Cambridge (1851)

The Burial of the Poet (1879)

The Two Angels (1855)

Resignation (1848)

Dedication to "Seaside and Fireside" (1849)

My Lost Youth (1855)

The Fifieth Birthday of Agassiz (1857)

Hawthorne (1864)

Three Friends of Mine (1874)

The Herons of Elmwood (1876)

The Children's Hour (1859)

Travels by the Fireside (1874)

Amalfi (1875)

Castles in Spain (1877)

From my Arm-Chair (1879)

Possibilities (1882)

The Cross of Snow (1879)

Palingenesis (1864)

Morituri Salutamus (1874)

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Charles Eliot Norton, son of Andrews Norton, was a noted author, translator, social critic and liberal activist. He was appointed Professor of the History of Art at Harvard in 1875; this chair was created for him and he held it for 23 years until retirement. The Archaeological Institute of America chose him as its first president, and he was described as the foremost American proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.

The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures are given annually by distinguished professors at Harvard, where Norton bequeathed the more valuable portion of his library.

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading through all of the poetry volumes of my Riverside Literature Series collection, and there's a lot of Longfellow in there. Thirteen different numbers, actually. This is the last of them that I hadn't already read, though many of the individual poems are in other volumes as well.

The "Sketch of His Life" by Charles Eliot Norton is not the best Longfellow bio in the series. It's a bit thin on details, and settles for general assertions about his life and character that are more convincing elsewhere.

The selection of poems deemed to be "Autobiographical" is a little odd, but I can see why they decided to make a collection of them, especially when autobiographical poems were not the norm. "The Battle of Lovell's Pond" is one of his first published pieces, but it can't be said to be autobiographical. And I don't know how "The Wreck of the Hesperus" gets in here, except that it made a splash.

For modern tastes the selection is uneven, especially as it includes early efforts and a couple of "occasional" pieces. Still, as much as we have turned our backs on his kind of poetry these days, the man had something, and it shows in this collection. I have had a range of responses to the different numbers by Longfellow, but I'm surprised at how positive my reaction has been to many of them. Before starting the volume, I would have predicted a two-star rating, possibly three. Bits of it are two-star, but on the whole I'm giving it four.