Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha published in Boston (1855)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha was published in Boston on November 10, 1855, by Ticknor and Fields. The work, written in trochaic tetrameter, features Native American characters and relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha. It achieved immediate success, selling 50,000 copies by 1857.

Episodes

Background and detail

Background. Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on writing. According to the supplied passage, he drew from Algic Researches (1839) and other writings by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an ethnographer and United States Indian agent, and from Heckewelder's Narratives. His journal entry from June 28, 1854, indicates he initially planned to name the work 'Manabozho' before deciding on 'Hiawatha,' mistakenly believing the names were synonymous.

Publication. The poem was published on November 10, 1855, by Ticknor and Fields. It was an immediate success, with Longfellow calculating that it had sold 50,000 copies by 1857. The Grolier Club named it the most influential book of 1855.

Content. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. The poem features childhood adventures, the slaying of the evil magician Pearl-Feather, and the invention of written language.

People involved

Sources

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.