American Genius: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The life story of Longfellow is full of drama, romance, and tragedy. His fame reached far and wide, drawing him into the highest circles of society. Though sorrow came with his success, he continued to produce some of his most eloquent works, still quoted 200 years after his birth.

American Genius tells of Longfellow's close relationship as a boy with his grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, a general in the Revolutionary War under George Washington. The daring and exciting escape of General Wadsworth from a British prison in Maine during the Revolutionary War is described in detail early in this book. Henry Longfellow and his siblings loved to hear their grandfather tell this story. Later when Henry Longfellow married Fanny Appleton, his father-in-law gave the couple a wedding gift of the mansion on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that had been the headquarters and home for General Washington for the 9 months during which Washington took over the command of the Continental Army and then drove the British out of Boston on Evacuation Day, March 1776. Longfellow lived in this Washington Headquarters mansion for the remaining 40 years of his life. The house is now the Washington Headquarters/Longfellow House National Park Historical Site and open to the public for tours. David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize wining historian and television and movie narrator and commentator, described this Brattle Street house as the 4th most historic house in America.

Besides some of the poems of Longfellow about the American Revolution and George Washington, the book covers the writing of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Longfellow, perhaps his most famous poem and the one most familiar to Americans. Author: Marian R. Carlson. Paperback; 147 pages.