Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horace Gregory (Introduction), Edward M. Cifelli (Preface by)

Distinguished poet Horace Gregory has selected thirty-seven of Longfellow's most enduring poems for this edition, the only paperback of Longfellow's poetry in print.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, Literature, Historical Fiction

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

An extremely popular American poet in his own lifetime, Longfellow's best-known works include The Song of Hiawatha (1855), a translation of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, done in 1864-67, Paul Revere's Ride and Evangeline. He's one of the New England poets now typically referred to as the Fireside Poets.

Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, and after studying in Europe for several years subsequently became Bowdoin's professor of modern languages and librarian. After further study in Europe, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to become professor of modern languages at Harvard in 1836. Meanwhile, Mary Potter Longfellow, his first wife, had died in 1835, following a miscarriage.

His first published collections of poetry were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). In 1854, he retired from teaching to focus on his writing. His second wife, Frances Appleton Longfellow, died in 1861 of burns sustained when her dress caught fire. After her death, for some time Longfellow had difficulty writing original poetry, and focused on translations from foreign languages.

Longfellow wrote lyric poetry noted for its musicality, and often presented stories of mythology and legend. He frequently imitated European poetic styles (and his work was popular in Europe in his day, as well as in the U.S.). As a Romantic poet, he seeks primarily to express and to evoke emotion in his poetry.

Reviews

[Sam Millen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evangeline is brilliant, and there are many other wonderful works in here too. The only reason I give it three stars is because as a collection, not all of the poems appealed to me personally. In saying that, I can certainly appreciate their significance and the craftsmanship behind them.

[Charlene - Coffee and a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Top 3 Poems
• Evangeline
• The Wreck of the Hesperus
• Hawthorne

Overall Thoughts
• I really enjoyed this collection of poetry, especially the longer narrative poems. Longfellow can tell a really good story.

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Who lived and loved so long ago"
" a feeling of sadness comes o'er me that my soul cannot resist"

[Ystradclud · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually found this, heavily discounted and covered in dust, in a little bookstore in Beijing. Considering how my paternal grandfather (pbuh) was a pure-blooded Acadian, I figured it was high time I read the so-called national epic of my ancestors. Evangeline is a highly dramatized retelling of the expulsion of the Acadians (Le Grand Dérangement) from the perspective of a young woman searching for her fiance. It's beautifully written, but the sappiness and dramatics were a little much for me. It reminds me of something my great grandma (also pure-blooded Acadian, also dead, also phuh) would read when she needed a good cry. While based on historical fact, this is an epic poem, not a history. I recommend "A Great and Noble Scheme" by John Mack Faragher if you want a well-written history of this little-known genocide in colonial North America.

Other than Evangeline, The Skeleton in Armor, Paul Revere's Ride, and Amalfi were standouts for me. I'm not a great lover of poetry, but I found everything in here accessible and worthwhile.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75
I finally finished this one. I’ve been reading it off and on now for about a year, and I have to say, overall it was really nice. Some poems with stories I had heard before, some I hadn’t. Some were more interesting than others. Here are my standouts:
Evangeline
The Day is Done
Sandalphon
The Warden of the Cinque Ports
My Lost Youth
The Birds of Killingworth
The Courtship of Miles Standish
Martin Franc

The last one was especially comical, and I think Evangeline was my favorite.

[Rose R Escorcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have re-read my favorite Longfellow poems many times. I really appreciated the introduction and chronology of his life in this collection. Understanding how his life experiences influenced his writing during certain time periods gave me a different perspective. That being said, this is not a complete collection of his works, and is missing a couple of my favorites. However it’s not something unexpected as it is titled, Evangeline and Selected Tales and Poems.

[birdbassador]

i think it is very funny that this collection is ~550 pages, of which ~60 (35 of the introduction, and 25 in the afterword) are apologia of the form "okay, we know longfellow was kind of schmaltzy and maudlin and preachy and a lot of his poems aren't very good, but... some of them are?"

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longfellow has a way of punching you in the gut at the end of his poems.

[Bryce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Evangeline and The Courtship of Miles Standish. I wasn't as interested in a lot of the shorter poems, but I'm not much of a poetry fan to begin with.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

He is the only poet that really makes sense to me. Back in high school, I had to choose a poet to mimic and write about, and he happened to drop out of the sky. His poetry and tales are really straight forward but has beautiful descriptions that come alive. Some of his more famous tales or poetry (which you may not realize were written by him) are: The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere's Ride, and The Village Blacksmith (one of my favorites). I have always felt he could be a poet for the person who doesn't necessarily enjoy reading poetry.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked Longfellow's poems a lot better when I was a youngster. The sing-songy rhyming cadences were probably comforting to me as a child-- much like a lullaby. As an adult, they mostly just got on my nerves after a bit. And the surfeit of strained similes is almost too much to bear! Longfellow had talent, but he was writing to suit the tastes of the times in which he lived.
I do still get a little shiver up and down my spine from "Paul Revere's Ride"---one of my childhood favorites.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a reading challenge, I had to read a book of poetry. Some of them are quite famous. Although I didn't enjoy every poem in the collection, it was a good collection.

[Kris Lundgaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often delightful. I really like "The Birds of Killingworth."