The time has come to take another look at Longfellow, America's most popular poet. Christoph Irmscher overturns the modern prejudice against Longfellow as the mere purveyor of literary comfort food. Examining his unpublished papers alongside letters written by his fans at home and abroad, Irmscher offers a fresh view of the poet's connection with his audience. Reviewing Longfellow's idea of authorship, his travels, and his translations, Irmscher demonstrates that Longfellow saw literature as a transnational conversation breaking down social and linguistic barriers. For Longfellow, the poet was less Emerson's "liberating god" than a distributor of cultural goods democratically shared by authors and readers alike. Longfellow Redux is the first book-length study of Longfellow's poetry since 1966 and contains numerous illustrations, including previously unpublished pencil sketches by Longfellow himself.

Christoph Irmscher is a professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the author of The Poetics of Natural History: From John Bartram to William James and Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200.

List of Illustrations   xi
Acknowledgments   xiii
A Note on Quotations   xvii

Introduction   1
1. Strangers as Friends: Longfellow and His Readers   7
2. How Marbles Are Made: Fatherhood and Authorship   72
3. Mad for Travel: Enrico Abroad   145
4. "It Whirls Me Away": Longfellow and Translation   218
Epilogue   275

Notes   279
Bibliography   317
Index   333