Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was among the first and most beloved heralds of America's fledgling cultural identity in the early nineteenth century. Growing up in his hometown of Portland, Maine, the variety of people and activities unique to a seaport stirred his young mind. A precocious child, Longfellow started school at age three and advanced with academic vigor. He graduated Bowden College at age nineteen and was offered a professorship as the chair of modern languages. As a teacher, Longfellow exposed his students to the literary heritage of Europe while privately he published travel sketches and translations of Old World literature. He moved to Cambridge in 1834 after the death of his first wife and became a romantic figure at Harvard with his long flowing hair and flowered waistcoats. He continued to teach while publishing several books, including Evangeline, until 1854 when he resigned from Harvard to devote the rest of his life to "the joyous task of his own poetic writing." Evangeline is Longfellow's most famous and enduring work. This narrative poem, inspired by an outline provided by his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, recounts the trials of two Acadians separated during the expulsion of French settlers from Nova Scotia. Evangeline's devotion leads her through Louisiana and the western wilderness in search of her true love, only to find him dying in Philadelphia. This edition of the classic is enriched by a preface describing the history of the Acadian people and an introduction detailing Longfellow's life and works. During Longfellow's final years he was recognized for his great achievements with honorary degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. While traveling Europe, he called upon Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales at their request. He was chosen as a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and of the Spanish Academy. He published more than twenty books before his death in 1882.