Abstract:ALTHOUGH some attention has been given to Longfellow's contemporaneous critical reception in the British Isles,' little notice has been given to his critical reception in America. Most writers have be...ALTHOUGH some attention has been given to Longfellow's contemporaneous critical reception in the British Isles,' little notice has been given to his critical reception in America. Most writers have been content merely to suggest, by referring to attacks by Poe and to columns of impressive sales figures, varying degrees of initial response to his publications. present essay, based upon contemporaneous reviews, will reveal in detail the nature of Longfellow's reception from the appearance of isolated undergraduate verses to that of the volume which established his permanent fame. In the fall of 1824 Longfellow was, at seventeen, a member of the senior class at Bowdoin College. In the two years since he had entered as a sophomore, he had experienced a development both of his imagination and his capacity for self-expression. Vague yearnings had crystallized into a determination to attempt a literary career. Self-directed and confident on the basis of scholastic successes and the standing of the well-to-do Portland family into which he had been born, he was eager for preeminence. The fact he wrote to his father, -and I will not disguise it in the least, for I think I ought not,-the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centers in it. 2 He was soon to register his first triumph. Already he had succeeded in placing a number of poems in Portland newspapers, and a poem, an essay, and a dramatic sketch in a Philadelphia periodical, the American Monthly Magazine. In the fall he made the first of his contributions, signed only with his initials, to the United States Literary Gazette, and in some nine months fourteen of his poems and four prose selections, mostlyRead More
Publication Year: 1963
Publication Date: 1963-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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