Author Comparisons

     Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27th, 1807 and at the age of 6 he began attending the Portland Academy.  When he was 13 he published his first poem, The Battle of Lovell's Pond.  Then the following year he enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME where he would graduate at the age of 18. From the years of 1826-1829 he decided to go out and study and travel throughout Europe.  When he was done with that he went back to Bowdoin College where he decided to teach through 1835.  During his time teaching he was married to Mary Potter in 1831 who later dies in 1835 and is one of the reasons he stops teaching.  In 1836 he meets Frances (Fanny) Appleton and returns to US from second tour of Europe. He then moves to Cambridge, MA to begin professorship at Harvard College.  Henry and Fanny are married in 1843 and have six children: Charles, Ernest, Frances (died at age 16 months), Alice, Edith, and Anne.  Fanny dies in 1861 from burning alive when her dress caught on fire and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow dies in 1882.  

     Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in Long Island.  At the age of four his family moved over from Long Island to Brooklyn.  Whitman's father him out of school at the age of 11 to help support the family.  He works as an office boy and then apprentices as a printer for a local newspaper. In 1833, his family moves back to Long Island.  In 1838 he publishes a weekly newspaper, the Long Islander.  Whitman publishes many radical ideas on topics such as Labor Issues, Woman's Rights, Immigration, and Slavery.  On January 23rd, 1873 Whitman suffers a stroke and is left unable to use his left leg and arm.  Two years later a second stroke harms the right side of his body.  On March 26, 1892 Whitman dies and is buried in New Jersey. 

      The thing that makes both authors very similar in the style they write and I think this is just due to the time they wrote in.  They also shared a similar background when it came to writing in newspapers.  They both wrote about topics that could be considered controversial and also writings about life and other poetic things.