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The Fireside Poets
America’s First Literary Stars
What are the Fireside Poets?
• First group of American poets to rival
British poets in popularity in either
country.
• Preferred conventional forms over
experimentation.
• Often used American legends and scenes
of American life as their subject matter.
Who were the Fireside Poets?
• Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
• James Russell
Lowell
• Oliver Wendell
Holmes
• John Greenleaf
Whittier
• The purposes and content of American
literature took a drastic shift at the end of
the 18th century. Now that American had
earned her freedom, the need for
persuasive writing and political pamphlets
ceased to be such a demand.
• Literature began to be more reflective;
something to be enjoyed and shared. The
Fireside Poets were a group of men
whose writings were especially prized for
newfound 'family time' - literature was
literally shared around the fireside as an
activity.
• Both Fireside Poets and Transcendentalist
were similar in that they both were involved
with Romanticism.
• They were called Fireside
Poets because the poems had rhymed
stanzas which made their body of work easy
to memorize and recite at school and at
home
• It was mainly a source of entertainment for
families gathered around a "fire" which
gave them the name "fireside Poets".
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• 1807-1882
• Attended Bowdoin
College with Nathaniel
Hawthorne!
• Taught at Harvard for
18 years.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• First wife died from an infection following a
miscarriage;
• Eight years later, after a long courtship, he
married his second wife;
• She died after being fatally burned in a
household accident.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Longfellow’s attempts to beat out the
flames left him badly burned.
• The scars prevented him from shaving.
• His optimism made him the most popular
poet of his time.
• He became known as a Fireside poet,
whose works were read by families
gathered around the fireplace.
James Russell Lowell
• 1819-1891
• Of the prominent
Boston Brahmin Lowell
family
• Active in anti-slavery
causes
• His career was
disrupted by personal
tragedies, including the
deaths of his wife and
three children.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
• 1809-1894
• Medical doctor –
invented the term
“anesthesia.”
• Composed “Old
Ironsides,” which saved
the U.S.S. Constitution
from the scrapyard
• Father of Supreme
Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr.
• Wrote The Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table
John Greenleaf Whittier
• 1807-1892
• Composed Snowbound and Legends
of New England
• Active in antislavery movement
Lasting Impact
• Longfellow remained the most popular American poet
for decades. When Poe criticized him, he was all but
ostracized. Longfellow remains the only American
poet to be immortalized by a bust in Westminster
Abbey’s Poets’ Corner
• They took on causes in their poetry, such as the
abolition of slavery, which brought the issues to the
forefront in a palatable way.
• Through their scholarship and editorial efforts, they
paved the way for later Transcendental writers like
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and
Walt Whitman.