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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Life Time
27 February 1807 - 24 March 1882
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Born in Portland (Maine) in a family of immigrants from England. He learned to write and read early; among his children's books were The Poems of Ossian, Don Quixote, and The Book of Sketches by Washington Irving. At the age of 19, Longfellow received an offer to teach at the college and was happy to respond to it, especially since the college gave the new professor a “study leave” to travel to Europe. In three years, Longfellow traveled to Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain and returned
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Born in Portland (Maine) in a family of immigrants from England. He learned to write and read early; among his children's books were The Poems of Ossian, Don Quixote, and The Book of Sketches by Washington Irving. At the age of 19, Longfellow received an offer to teach at the college and was happy to respond to it, especially since the college gave the new professor a “study leave” to travel to Europe. In three years, Longfellow traveled to Spain, Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain and returned to the United States in 1829. After working for several years in college, in 1834, Longfellow received a position of professor at Harvard University - and again went to Europe (during this trip, the poet's wife died). Upon his return, Longfellow began teaching and published his first literary works, the knightly novel Hyperion and the collection of poems Voices of the Night. In 1847, one of Longfellow’s most famous poems, Evangeline, was published (the idea of which was suggested to the poet by Nathaniel Hawthorne). In 1854, feeling that work at the university was becoming a hindrance, Longfellow resigned, and in June of the same year began his Song of Hiawatha. This poem was a great success (in Russian it is known in the textbook translation of I. A. Bunin); it was followed by "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and other poems and poems. In 1861, Longfellow visited Europe again. In England, he became an honorary doctor of Oxford and Cambridge universities, received an audience with Queen Victoria, and a number of European academies of sciences (including the Russian one) elected him a member. According to the American literary critic Van Vic Brooks, Longfellow "was the greatest of the stars that rose over New England."