Kavanagh is a novel by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Kavanagh is a novel by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow began writing the story in 1847 [1] and it was published in 1849. Kavanagh is the story of a country romance. Besides a character named Kavanagh, among its characters is a school teacher named Mr. Churchill, who has always planned to write a romance, but whose procrastination never allows him to start, until late in life he resigns himself to his "destiny".
Longfellow also used the novel to argue against the view, in the book propounded by a character based on Cornelius Mathews, that American literature must be entirely devoid of European influences and be exclusively national. Instead, Longfellow felt that American literature could and should be universalist, with its unique North American influences. He saw the use of European models not as imitation but as a "continuation" that Americans could be proud of. [1]
Of the novel, Robert L. Gale writes in A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion that [2]
Kavanagh is of little value as a novel, even though Emily Dickinson […], Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Dean Howells, among other contemporaries, admired it greatly.
Kavanagh was also a precursor of local color writing, and "it depicts what is probably the first lesbian relationship in American fiction". [3]
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems "Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline". He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the fireside poets from New England.
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition thus is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature of other traditions produced in the United States and in other immigrant languages. Furthermore, a rich tradition of oral storytelling exists amongst Native Americans.
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in English and published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians.
The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, also known by the British title Transformation, was the last of the four major romances by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and was published in 1860. The Marble Faun, written on the eve of the American Civil War, is set in a fantastical Italy. The romance mixes elements of a fable, pastoral, gothic novel, and travel guide.
The fireside poets – also known as the schoolroom or household poets – were a group of 19th-century American poets associated with New England. These poets were very popular among readers and critics both in the United States and overseas. Their domestic themes and messages of morality presented in conventional poetic forms deeply shaped their era until their decline in popularity at the beginning of the 20th century.
Tales of a Wayside Inn is a collection of poems by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The book, published in 1863, depicts a group of people at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts as each tells a story in the form of a poem. The characters telling the stories at the inn are based on real people. The compilation, which Longfellow originally wanted to title "The Sudbury Tales", proved to be popular and he issued two additional series in the 1870s.
"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is a Christmas carol based on the 1863 poem "Christmas Bells" by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The song tells of the narrator hearing Christmas bells during the American Civil War, but despairing that "hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men". After much anguish and despondency the carol concludes with the bells ringing out with resolution that "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep" and that there will ultimately be "...peace on earth, good will to men".
"The Saga of King Olaf" is a poetic sequence by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1863 as part of his book Tales of a Wayside Inn.
"The Children's Hour" is a poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in the September 1860 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.
Windmill Cottage is a historic house and former windmill at 144 Division Street in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It was the home of George Washington Greene, a former American consul to Rome and historian. It was purchased for Greene by his friend, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
"The Village Blacksmith" is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in 1840. The poem describes a local blacksmith and his daily life. The blacksmith serves as a role model who balances his job with the role he plays with his family and community. Years after its publication, a tree mentioned in the poem was cut down and part of it was made into an armchair which was then presented to Longfellow by local schoolchildren.
"A Psalm of Life" is a poem written by American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, often subtitled "What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist". Longfellow wrote the poem not long after the death of his first wife and while thinking about how to make the best of life. It was first published anonymously in 1838 before being included in a collection of Longfellow's poems the next year. Its inspirational message has made it one of Longfellow's most famous poems.
"Paul Revere's Ride" is an 1860 poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April 18, 1775, although with significant inaccuracies. It was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It was later retitled "The Landlord's Tale" in Longfellow's 1863 collection Tales of a Wayside Inn.
English literature is literature written in the English language from the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.
Hyperion: A Romance is one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's earliest works, published in 1839. It is a prose romance which was published alongside his first volume of poems, Voices of the Night.
The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-19th century.
Poems on Slavery is a collection of poems by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in support of the United States anti-slavery efforts. With one exception, the collection of poems were written at sea by Longfellow in October 1842. The poems were reprinted as anti-slavery tracts two different times during 1843. Longfellow, very conscious of his public persona, published the poems even though he feared it would hurt him commercially. At the time of publication reviews were mixed, but more recently critics have begun to appreciate the collection again, for its political message and for its rhetorical strategies.
The type of romance considered here is mainly the genre of novel defined by the novelist Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", in contrast to mainstream novels which realistically depict the state of a society. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances, and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances". Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".
Rachel Dyer: A North American Story is a Gothic historical novel by American writer John Neal. Published in 1828 in Maine, it is the first bound novel about the Salem witch trials. Though it garnered little critical notice in its day, it influenced works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Walt Whitman. It is best remembered for the American literary nationalist essay, "Unpublished Preface", that precedes the body of the novel.
Carrie Jenkins Harris was a 19th-century Canadian novelist who was born and lived in Nova Scotia.
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