The complete online text of The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The insistent moral tone, sentimentality, and serene idealism of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) made him an extremely popular author at home and abroad in the 19th century. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine,...

By far the most widely known and best-loved American poet of his time, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow achieved a level of national and international prominence possibly unequaled in the literary history of the United States. Poems such as "Paul Revere's Ride...

During his lifetime and for some years after his death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was by far the most popular and widely read American poet in the world. Although his reputation today is greatly diminished, a portion of his work still stands as a perman...

The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Illustrated by Frederic Remington. David R. Godine, March 2004. $23.95 This lovely little edition contributes to a fledgling recovery of nineteenth-century American poetry. Perhaps it is strange to call Godine's fine-press work "recovery"; the academic...

1/3 From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland . . . A century after those words were published on Nov. 10, 1855, they were paraphrased, put to a drum beat and used to sell Hamm's...

Longfellow's epic poem, "The Song of Hiawatha," was written 152 years ago, but Michael Maglaras thinks the story can be as appealing to modern-day audiences as "Superman" or "Star Wars."Like Clark Kent and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Indian hero Hiawatha has human traits and super powers,...

In the following essay, Clarke delves into the background legends and stories that inspired Longfellow's poem and describes how the poet adapted and changed them.

In the following essay, Ferguson determines the influence of political events, particularly the Civil War, on Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish.

In the following essay, Carr examines The Song of Hiawatha as an example of how American literature was striving to achieve a unique identity separate from Europe during the early nineteenth century, and comments on the pros and cons of this self-conscious pursuit.