Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not just renowned for his verse; he was also one of Harvard University’s most beloved professors. His time in academia informed his own poetry at the same time as he was able to inculcate a love of language and learning in his students.
After teaching for years at Bowdoin, Longfellow was offered the position of Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard in 1834 and took it up in 1837 after a trip to Europe. He moved into Craigie House on Brattle Street in Cambridge, where he hosted prominent literary and cultural figures like Nathanial Hawthorne and Charles Eliot Norton and formed a society called the Five of Clubs which included men like Charles Sumner and Cornelius Conway Felton. The house is now preserved as the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
While there he began the first comparative literature program in the country and also promoted the idea that modern languages should be taught by native speakers. Of his time in Harvard, the Maine Historical Site’s page on the author explains, “[Longfellow] worked full time at Harvard University, lectured, and directed the Modern Languages department. The department was meant to consist of four men teaching in their native languages: Spanish, French, Italian, and German. When a position was vacant, Henry had to fill in. Frustrated with his situation, Longfellow wrote to his father in September of 1839, ‘But my work here grows quite intolerable; and unless they make some change, I will leave them, with or without anything to do. I will not consent to have my life crushed out of me so. I had rather live a while on bread and water.’ Longfellow managed to tolerate the situation for another 15 years.” Many of Longfellow’s most beloved works derive from this time period –“Evangeline,” “Voices of the Night,” and “Ballads and Other Poems.”
In order to devote his time fully to writing poetry, Longfellow resigned from his position in 1854 and gave his last lecture on April 19th of that year. In 1859 Harvard awarded an honorary doctorate of laws.
