Maine History Online

Longfellow found escape from his grief in his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy.

As his translation progressed, he regularly invited his literary friends to his home to critique the work.

In subsequent years, Craigie House became a meeting place for the literati of America and Europe -- James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Dean Howells, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin -- and a mecca for his readers.