Cross of Snow

A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

By: Nicholas A. Basbanes

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

In Cross of Snow, the result of more than 12 years of research, including access to never-before-examined letters, diaries, journals, and notes, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work - the soul - of the man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, and translations, and whose renown was so wide-reaching that his deep friendships included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and Oscar Wilde.

Basbanes writes of the shaping of Longfellow's character, his huge body of work that included translations of numerous foreign works, among them, the first rendering into a complete edition by an American of Dante's Divine Comedy. We see Longfellow's two marriages, each cut short by tragedy. His first to Mary Storer Potter that ended in the aftermath of a miscarriage, leaving Longfellow devastated. His second marriage to the brilliant Boston socialite Fanny Appleton, after a three-year pursuit by Longfellow (his "fiery crucible", he called it), and his emergence as a literary force and a man of letters.

A portrait of a bold artist, experimenter of poetic form, and an innovative translator - the human being he was, the times in which he lived, the people whose lives he touched, his monumental work, and its place in his America and ours.

©2020 Nicholas A. Basbanes (P)2021 Tantor

The Work of a Poet

After his years of teaching, Longfellow focused on the work of a poet. Yet his preparation through education and academic work was, in a sense, his apprenticeship, his juvenilia. This biography makes clear how important the life he lived was to the work he did.

Supplement this book with Dana Gioia’s essay “Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism” to understand how we lost this great American artist and how we might recover our appreciation of him.