The Stories Behind "Revere's Ride," 19 Sept 2007

In a couple of weeks, Old South Meeting-House in Boston will host a lecture that might interest Boston 1775 readers:

September 19, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Paul Revere’s Ride Revisited

Eighty-five years after Paul Revere made his ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow set pen to paper and turned the midnight rider into an instant legend. New research has uncovered some fascinating discoveries about Longfellow’s poem. Charles Bahne, independent historian and author of “The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail”, will discuss how the poet came to write about Revere, the poem’s publication history, changes made to the text over time, and why the poem isn’t historically accurate.

Longfellow was born in 1807, and Bahne’s talk is one of a series of bicentennial tributes each Wednesday in September. For fans of American poetry and Boston culture in the 1800s, the others are:

• 5 Sept, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Old South Meeting-House: Longfellow biographer Charles Calhoun on “The Art of Friendship: Longfellow’s Circle 1840-1860.” On any evening in Longfellow’s Craigie House one might have met Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, Sumner, Agassiz, Kemble, or Cushman.
• 12 Sept, 6:30-7:30 p.m., Old South Meeting-House: Dartmouth College Professor Colleen G. Boggs on “‘Better than the vernaculars’: Longfellow as Translator.” Professor Longfellow’s efforts as teacher, translator, critic, and anthologist to change the contours of American literature.
• 26 Sept, 7:30-9:00 p.m., First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church Street in Harvard Square: Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and Longfellow scholar, revisits the legacy of the “Public Poet” with John Barr of the Poetry Foundation and the Cambridge Forum. What does Longfellow’s work say to twenty-first century readers?
  

All these events are free and open to the public. They are co-sponsored by the Paul Revere Memorial Association, Old South Meeting-House, the Friends of the Longfellow House, Longfellow National Historic Site, and the Cambridge Forum. Funding by the Lowell Institute.