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Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin
College. Though his father hoped his son would become a lawyer,
Longfellow proved such an excellent student of languages that
Bowdoin hired him as its first professor of modern languages.
In 1836 he moved to Harvard, where he taught European literatures
of many different periods and created an important anthology,
The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845), that helped
make European poetry accessible to the general American public.
In his own poetry, Longfellow followed the examples of these
European styles, transforming classical Greek or Finnish folk
meters into his own truly American creations. Longfellow's
second wife, Fanny Appleton, was a Boston heiress whose money
allowed the couple to live in relative sumptuousness. When
Fanny was fatally burned in 1861, Longfellow turned in his
despair to translating Dante's Divine Comedy. At
his death, Longfellow was the most popular and beloved poet
of his time.
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