Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), a collection of verse stories told by seven characters at the Wayside Inn, with “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a work he had published three years earlier in the Boston Transcript (1860) and again in The Atlantic Monthly (1861). Having already reached a wide audience, “Paul Revere’s Ride” was a logical choice. In his laudatory December 1863 review of Tales of a Wayside Inn for The Atlantic Monthly, George William Curtis noted, “‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ is already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the Revolutionary War which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this war has but the more closely endeared to them.” Curtis believed the tale had strengthened the nation during the Civil War.
Longfellow’s re-publication of “Paul Revere’s Ride” in Tales of a Wayside is much more complicated, however, due to the problematic character who recites the tale, the Landlord, and the criticism of the tale by another character, the Poet. The Landlord is the most self-conscious and least verbally adept character, yet he delivers the most patriotic poem of the collection with artistry that reinforces its message. With the mismatch between speaker and stylistic excellence, Longfellow calls attention to “Paul Revere’s Ride” as nationalistic rhetoric and literary artifice. The Poet, who often aligns with Longfellow in the collection, angers the Landlord by placing Paul Revere’s actions within suspect medieval chivalric traditions, which are more fictive than factual.
Through artful revision, altering appurtenances around the poem but not the poem itself, Longfellow expressed skepticism about war. By 1863, he had endured enough tragedy with the loss of two wives. Feeling daily anxiety about his oldest son Charley, a lieutenant in the First Massachusetts Calvary, Longfellow was weary with loss of life.
About the presenterJeffrey Hotz
I am an Associate Professor of English at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. My area of specialization is early American literature, focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I am currently completing a book-length study on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I am interested in popular poetry, generally, and public poets who have reached broad audiences outside of the academy and literary circles.