Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine. He was the second son out of eight and loved to read. He enjoyed foreign tales and works by Shakespeare. His schooling took him to Europe for three years, and when he returned, he began to publish the first in a list of books. Longfellow's first wife, Mary Storer Potter died in a miscarriage in 1835. His second wife died after catching the skirt of her dress on fire in 1861. The second wife was named Frances Appleton and they were married for eighteen years and had six children together. Reading kept Longfellow out of a depression after Frances's death.
Longfellow worked as a professor at Harvard when he was thirty-two years old. The time spent teaching, however, gave him little time to focus on his writing. He quite his job at Harvard in 1854 to devote the rest of his life to poetry. He wrote many poems throughout his life and mainly during the time of the American Civil War. He published books up until his death on March 24, 1882.
Walt Whitman was born May 31,1819, in Brooklyn. He was the second son out of nine children and loved "the written word". He first worked in New York City as a printer. By age 17, he was a teacher and remained a teacher until 1841. He then began a career in journalism and founded a newspaper titled Long-Islander. He became a main-stream editor in New York by working for many leading newspapers.
In 1862, his brother became wounded severely in the Civil War. Whitman moved to Washington D.C. and worked in the hospitals, tending to the wounded. He struggled financially but persevered by re-publishing Leaves of Grass occasionally. With the money he eventually earned from his writing, Whitman bought a home and died March 26, 1892.
Where Walt Whitman re-published Leaves of Grass and eventually released Goodbye, My Fancy, Longfellow had many poetry books published in his lifetime. These publications included Tales of a Wayside Inn, Voices of the Night, Ballads and Other Poems, and Evangeline. Both men struggled through the Civil War and suffered many loses in their lives. I have noticed that the best writers in American history have faced the death of loved ones and great opsticals in their lives. Perhaps that is what made both these men so popular. Both men had fame bestowed upon them for their success in writing. Whitman may have leaned on his success more prominantly than Longfellow, but Longfellow never seemed to be destitute either.
Where Whitman had a book containing twelve untitled poems, Longfellow made more of a career out of his writing. Longfellow's poetry books often were story-length and had aspects of adventure and love. I imagine Longfellow to have been the expressive poet with the brooding soul and Whitman to be the creative imagination with the 'in your face' personality.
