Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry usually avoided reference to the intimate or personal. Yet Longfellow's family life was marked by extreme and frequent tragedy that would no doubt been fodder for poetry. He did indeed channel his grief into versification, but he preferred to dwell on American myths and history, more general evocations of emotion or heroism, and prescriptives on how to live a meaningful life.
The first tragedy that marked Longfellow’s life was the 1835 death by miscarriage of his first wife Mary Storer Potter. This happened while the couple was abroad; Longfellow was studying languages in Europe to prepare for his position as professor of modern languages at Bowdoin College.
Subsequently, Longfellow married Fanny Appleton, a woman whom he’d loved and courted for a long time. In 1848 the couple had to bury a one-year old daughter.
In 1861, while Fanny was melting wax for packages of her daughter’s curls, her dress caught fire. Longfellow tried to extinguish the flames but Fanny died the next day from her burns. Longfellow wrote to Fanny’s sister, “How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly—as I have from the beginning—for the beautiful life we led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end."
Longfellow was profoundly depressed after this incident, and returned to Europe where he spent time working on a translation of Dante into English. The only poem to address this tragedy, "Cross of Snow," came almost twenty years later.
