Longfellow in Love: Passion and Tragedy in the Life of the Poet

After four years traveling through Europe and a yearlong romance with Giulia Persiani in Rome, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow came back home in 1829 and fell in love again, this time with Mary Storer Potter, whom he married in 1831. They traveled together to England and Scandinavia in 1834 but their happiness was cut short when she died in 1835.

In 1836, traveling in Switzerland, he met the woman who would become the grand passion of his life, 18-year old Fanny Appleton of Boston. But she, a w...