Evangeline; A Tale of Acadie

Critical response

Evangeline became Longfellow's most famous work in his lifetime and was widely read.[19] It has been called the first important long poem in American literature.[20] Contemporary reviews were very positive. A reviewer for The Metropolitan Magazine said, "No one with any pretensions to poetic feeling can read its delicious portraiture of rustic scenery and of a mode of life long since defunct, without the most intense delight".[10] Longfellow's friend Charles Sumner said he had met a woman who "has read 'Evangeline' some twenty times and thinks it the most perfect poem in the language".[10] Other admirers of the poem included King Leopold I of Belgium.[21] Speaking privately, all of Longfellow's literary associates but Whittier attacked the piece, including his old friend John Neal, who wrote: "You really ought to be hanged–drawn and quartered" for writing in hexameter.[22]


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