Longfellow's Imaginative Engagement

Abstract

Longfellow’s Imaginative Engagement is a first-of-its-kind study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s late-career poems and biography from 1861 until 1882, covering the poet’s posthumous publications and the handling of his literary estate. Using never-before-discussed archival materials from Harvard’s Houghton Library and the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, including unpublished poems and poem fragments, this literary biography presents Longfellow’s vibrant and complex final two decades. After the tragic death of his beloved second wife, Frances (Fanny) Elizabeth Appleton, Longfellow reinvented himself as a creative artist, transforming his loss and the nation’s suffering in the Civil War and postwar period into compelling art. In this book, Jeffrey Hotz interprets the distinct phases of Longfellow’s late career, exploring his narrative poetry, translations, personal lyrics, religious poetry, aesthetic verse, and end-of-life vision of mortality as a journey. He considers Longfellow’s friendships and family life, publication strategies and literary reputation, and the recurrent theme of longing for an ideal female figure in his poems and private life. Interweaving unpublished poems and poem fragments with interpretations of published collections, Longfellow’s Imaginative Engagement examines the poet’s complex voice, which captured the public’s imagination, making him America’s most famous poet in the nineteenth century.