The Fireside Poets

v     Also known as the Schoolroom poets or Household Poets. These were a group of American poets that were very popular both in America and Europe.

v     The group included Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes Sr.

v     Bryant was the oldest, and Lowell was the youngest. Oliver Wendell Holmes was the last to die, in 1894.

v     These poets all lived in Massachusetts, and were connected with Harvard University, either as professors, students, or guest speakers.

v     Besides their popularity, these poets were connected by their style, using standard forms, meter, and stanzas, that made their work easier to memorize in school. J

v     Their poems were about family life, mythology, and politics, and were meant for common people, not critics.

William Cullen Bryant

v     Bryant became famous at age fourteen with his poem “Embargo”, criticizing the president.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

v     Longfellow is famous for his poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”, about a hero of the American Revolution who warned farmers that the British were coming.

John Greenleaf Whittier

v     Whittier was a Quaker abolitionist, most famous for his poem “Snow-Bound”, about a family trapped in their home by a snow storm. They relax by telling each other stories.

James Russell Lowell

v     Lowell is most famous for a book length satirical poem titled “A Fable for Critics”. It made fun of all the most famous poets and critics in America.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

v     Holmes’s most famous poem is “Old Ironsides”, a poem that saved America’s greatest warship, the USS Constitution from being turned into scrap.