Outre-Mer Or, A Pilgrimage To The Old World

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

632 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1846

About the author

Extremely popular works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet, in the United States in his lifetime, include The Song of Hiawatha in 1855 and a translation from 1865 to 1867 of Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow educated. His originally wrote the "Paul Revere's Ride" and "Evangeline." From New England, he first completed work of the fireside.

Bowdoin College graduated Longefellow, who served as a professor, afterward studied in Europe, and later moved at Harvard. After a miscarriage, Mary Potter Longfellow, his first wife, died in 1835. He first collected Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841).

From teaching, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow retired in 1854 to focus on his writing in the headquarters of of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the Revolutionary War for the remainder.

Dress of Frances Appleton Longfellow, his second wife, caught fire; she then sustained burns and afterward died in 1861. After her death, Longfellow had difficulty writing and focused on from foreign languages.

Longfellow wrote musicality of many known lyrics and often presented stories of mythology and legend. He succeeded most overseas of his day. He imitated European styles and wrote too sentimentally for critics.

Reviews

[Robyn Lowrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The world is a kind of book, in which he, who has seen his own country only, has read but one page…” Longfellow

What is a Travelogue? The Merriam-Webster definition states: 1. a piece of writing about travel. 2. a talk or lecture on travel usually accompanied by a film or slides. 3. a narrated motion picture about travel.

When I searched for a « travelogue » or “travel blog” on WordPress I could not find one post without an eye-catching photo of the traveler’s destination. “A piece of writing about travel”; can you imagine a travelogue without pictures in our modern world of high-tech Iphone cameras?

Longfellow created one of the first “travelogues” or “travel sketches” in 1830, just as photography was discovered. Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (Philadelphia: McKay Publishers) depicts distinctive features of each European country Longfellow visited sans photos. To me, this is would be an unimaginable task. For example, I recently visited one of the most breathtaking towns in the world; one that you can only imagine on a postcard or calendar! As our tour bus came over the mountain and I saw Hallstatt, Austria for the first time, I was awestruck; speechless. In fact, I posted a blog soon after and decided to just let the pictures speak for themselves. I had no words to describe its magical beauty.


After I returned home, I attempted to relay my impressions of Hallstatt through painting: the calm, still lake reflecting every cloud in detail, the peace I felt walking through this Alpine haven, the marvel of God’s creation hidden far away. Sans espoir!

What if Longfellow had seen this enchanted ville? How would he have described his first response? Would Longfellow have focused more on the inhabitants, food, customs and language of Hallstatt rather than the nature and architecture surrounding it? [I believe he would have stood more of a chance to discover these treasures than I had as most of the “locals” leave town during tourist season!]

Back to Outre-Mer. What was the purpose of Longfellow writing this travelogue? According to Thomas H. Pauly in his article “Outre-Mer and Longfellow’s Quest for a Career”, the original intent of traveling around Europe and subsequently publishing the travel sketches of his experiences was to show the value of his profession as a teacher of European languages and literature (New England Quarterly, 32). This “literary” experience would help him prepare for his duties as Bowdoin’s first professor of modern languages and make him a better teacher.

Longfellow scolded one of his colleagues, Slidell, who had previously traveled and written travel sketches of his trip to Spain saying that his writings did not provide useful and valuable information; “only dreamy sensations and vague recollections of a sunny land” (33). Consequently, Longfellow set out to provide something different in his travelogues. He wanted to break away from conventional guidebook information in which the account resembles the speech of a tour director with its disjointed sequence and presumed authority (38).

For those of you who love to travel in Europe (especially France) and value Longfellow in verse, Outre-Mer is this convergence of two. I found a used library copy (pub 1892) in very good condition from AbeBooks for a very reasonable price. In this small treasure trove, one can find Longfellow’s depictions in verse of Normandy, Auteuil, Cimetiere Père Lachaise, Rouen [see blog post], Valley of the Loire, and a journey to Spain.

In the Foreword, Longfellow invites his readers to join him on his pilgrimage with these words:

“Lystenyth, ye godely gentylmen, and all that ben hereyn! I am a pilgrim benighted on my way and crave a shelter till the storm is over, and a seat by the fireside in this honorable company. As a stranger I claim this courtesy at your hands; and will repay your hospitable welcome with tales of the countries I have passed through in my pilgrimage (7).

He had me at “lystenyth”!

Work Cited
Longfellow, Henry W. Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea. Philadelphia: McKay Publisher. 1892.
Pauly, Thomas H. “Outre-Mer and Longfellow’s Quest for a Career”. New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No 1 (Mar. 1977) pp. 30-52.JSTOR.

[Lanny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this the other day while drinking coffee
and was so charmed I almost bought the thing, but somehow knew I could find it on Gutenberg, and I did, but for some reason its all chopped up, which is okay I guess. I never knew how awesome Longfellow was. Here is the first page I turned to when I opened it. And I've looked at the on-line version I downloaded, but I've been back to Powell's twice, and both times I was standing there just trying to recapture my initial reaction:

ROME IN MIDSUMMER.

She "who tamed the world seemed to tame herself at last, and,
falling under her own weight, grew to be a prey to Time, who
with his iron teeth consumes all bodies at last, making all things, both animate and inanimate, which have their being under that changeling, the moon, to be subject unto corruption and desolation.
HOWELL'S SIGNORIE OP VENICE.

THE masks and mummeries of Carnival are over ; the imposing ceremonies of Holy Week have become a tale of the times of old ; the illumination of St. Peter's and the Girandola are no longer the theme of gentle and simple ; and finally, the barbarians of the North have retreated from the gates
of Rome, and left the Eternal City silent and deserted. The cicerone stands at the corner of the street with his hands in his pockets; the artist has shut himself up in his studio to muse upon antiquity; and the idle facchino lounges in the market place, and plays at mora by the fountain. Midsummer has come ; and you may now hire a palace for what, a few weeks ago, would hardly have paid your night's lodging in its garret.

So After that I looked for more Grand Tourish type stuff in my library and am now thinking of doing a Kenneth Goldbergesque copying of some sections about Rome from the Journals of James Boswell into my new blog _From Rome, Glittering Prizes_ which isn't really about Rome, but roaming
the digital and by extension the real, and its various 'counter-realities'.. which as often as not are the constructed memories of text, of history..

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the flow of this, sort of a narrator with in a narrator approach. The baptism of Fire is emotionally incredible.

[John]

for Gonzalo y familia
140+ pp. for Spain, of 374