Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807-24 March 1882) was an American poet and educator. Born in Portland, Maine, the grandson of Peleg Wadsworth, Longfellow joined a Federalist-leaning society while at Bowdoin College and traveled through Europe before meeting Washington Irving in Madrid and being persuaded to pursue writing. He taught at Bowdoin before publishing his first bokok in 1833, and he went on to author the poems Paul Revere's Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline and translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on writing, living at George Washington's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Numbered among New England's "fireside poets," he was the most popular American poet of his day before dying in 1882.