If you were attending school in the late-nineteenth century, it's very likely that your teacher would have taught you to memorize lines from "The Village Blacksmith" by renowned poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And on the classroom wall you'd probably see his portrait looking down benignly on you and your classmates. Longfellow was so famous and beloved by youth in this era that he was known as "the children's poet." Students not only memorized his poetry but sent him hundreds of letters. In this charming biography, storyteller and author Sydelle Pearl recounts the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by drawing upon the letters he received from his young admirers. In their letters, children from yesteryear reveal details about their lives that reach across the years to young people today. The letters also highlight the unique, close relationship that children shared with Longfellow. A girl from West Virginia writes, "Thank you so much for writing for children…. It makes us feel that we are not forgotten." Others ask him about what he did as a boy or a young man. In one extraordinary gesture of friendship, the schoolchildren of Cambridge celebrated his birthday by presenting him with a chair created from the wood of the "spreading chestnut tree" made famous in his poem "The Village Blacksmith." Longfellow dedicated his poem "From My Arm-Chair" to these thoughtful children. Complete with selected poems and photographs of the poet and his family, Dear Mr. Longfellow brings to life a famous figure of American literature and a distant, simpler age in the history of our country.

Most of the letters, which are of prime importance in America's cultural history, have never before been published. The remainder that have appeared in print frequently did so in emasculated form and in a wide variety of books and journals. Here, scrupulous annotations supply relevant identifications of individuals, explain allusions, and present information regarding the addresses of letters, endorsements, postmarks, and the location of manuscripts.

These final volumes of Andrew Hilen's admired edition bring together the extant Longfellow letters of 1866-1882, most of which have never before been published. During this period Longfellow's reputation reached its zenith; no American poet before or since has enjoyed a popular following more varied or numerous. Here we see him expanding his already enormous influence with the publication of Poems of Places, a poetic translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, and other works. The letters reveal him as a hard-working writer and editor, as an astute businessman who nevertheless gave freely of his gains to friends and causes, and as an often lonely and struggling individual. They provide, as well, a view of Longfellow's world--the American literary scene, the publishing business, academic life, politics, religion, and the Reconstruction period. Hilen includes in Volume VI a comprehensive index for the entire six-volume edition, which represents a social document of the times.

This is the biography of a man of letters. Mr. Longfellow was not that exclusively, but he was that supremely. He touched life at many points; and certainly he was no bookworm or dry-as-dust scholar shut up in a library. He kept the doors of his study always open, both literally and figuratively. But literature, as it was his earliest ambition, was always his most real interest; it was his constant point of view; it was his chosen refuge. His very profession was a literary one. Now, the life of a man of letters needs be unexciting and uneventful in the eyes of men of activities and affairs. In such a life, a new book is a great adventure, a new poem or tale a chief event. Such a life can be painted only by a multitude of minute touches. For this reason, and because it was desirable that he should tell his own story as far as possible, a large part of this biography is made up of extracts from a daily journal. By such a method could the reader best learn how a man of letters spends his time, and what occupies his thoughts. This is volume 1, covering the years 1807 through 1842.