Longfellow, Writer of Books: Interpretations of the Single Volume or Collection

This panel for the NeMLA 2016 Annual Convention, to be held in Hartford, Connecticut, from March 17 to March 20, 2016, seeks papers that continue the renaissance in the study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The submission deadline has been extended to October 5, 2015.

In his still indispensable volume _The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870_, posthumously published in 1968, William Charvat singles out Henry Wadsworth Longfellow not only as an extremely successful commercial author—"the first American professional poet"--but "the world's most successful poet" in the nineteenth century. Longfellow understood how to create, market, and develop the successful book by organizing original volumes and collected editions of his poems in a manner that would appeal to a broad cross section of the reading public.

This panel seeks papers that focus on Longfellow as a writer of books by interpreting specific single volumes or individual collected editions that Longfellow oversaw. Contributors may look at an individual book of poetry or prose, a collected edition of Longfellow's works organized by the poet, one of Longfellow's two international anthology projects, or his translation of Dante's _The Divine Comedy_. All interpretive approaches are welcome.

Interested scholars must create a NeMLA user account in order to submit abstracts directly to the NeMLA website for this panel at www.nemla.org. The due date for submissions is October 5, 2015. For a direct link to this session, please go to https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15593.