Picturing Henry


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1825

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1825
Item 11195   info
Maine Historical Society

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born and raised in Portland, became America's best-known poet in the 19th century.

Images of the poet and scholar are numerous and range from this silhouette, made when Longfellow was 18 and about to graduate from Bowdoin College, to a portrait painted by his son within a year of his death in 1882.

In the era before photography, Bowdoin College captured images of its graduating class with silhouettes.

Joining Longfellow in the "famous" Class of 1825 were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Longfellow's older brother, Stephen, and future brother-in-law George Washington Pierce.

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