Harvard Purchases Collection Of Longfellow Memorabilia

Harvard College Library this week purchased the largest known private collection of papers, photographs and memorabilia relating to poet and former Harvard professor of modern languages Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The collection of 19th- and early 20th-century documents pertaining to Longfellow was sold for an undisclosed sum by literary publicist Victor Gulotta, who had amassed it over 14 years.

The new purchase augments Harvard’s already extensive Longfellow collection, which includes the prolific poet’s personal papers, and will be housed in Houghton Library, the University’s repository for rare manuscripts.

Leslie Morris, curator of manuscripts for the Harvard College Library, said the curatorial departments of the Harvard library system receive sales offers daily from book dealers.

However, the University libraries make “relatively expensive” purchases like the Longfellow collection only once per year, or once every five years, Morris said.

“Research potential” is the primary factor in determining the value of a collection, she said. Yet Harvard librarians have a “particular fondness” for Longfellow “because he bought books for the library during his trips abroad,” she said.

Gulotta said his goal in collecting was to find “the man behind the poetry.” What Gulotta found was a man distinguished by how he treated others.

“Longfellow seemed to be such a good-natured person. He always responded to letters from admirers and tried to help amateur writers,” he said.

For instance, an 1843 letter in the collection sent to Nathaniel Hawthorne, praises his short story, “The Birthmark.”

“Dear Hawthornius,” Longfellow wrote, “not the comet himself can unfold a more glorious tail.”

Other items depict the poet as a “cultural icon,” Gulotta said. Toward the end of his life and after his death in 1882, his image was used to sell cigars, cigarettes, calendars, bookmarks, and greeting cards, according to Gulotta.

Despite being the most popular poet of his time, Longfellow does not currently have a strong following on university campuses, said Gulotta.

“Longfellow is generally considered to be a sentimental poet with little depth by those who read only his popular poems,” he said.

English Department Chair Lawrence Buell, Harvard College professor and the Marquand professor of english, studied Longfellow about ten years ago, but currently, there is little scholarly interest in Longfellow, Morris said. Longfellow is, however, resurfacing as a major literary figure, Gulotta said. The first biography on Longfellow published in three decades will be available this summer.