Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was perhaps the most admired American writer of the 19th century, and his works were extraordinary bestsellers at home and abroad. Longfellow's immense popularity helped raise the status of poetry in America, and some of his works -- "Hiawatha," "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "Evangeline," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and "Paul Revere's Ride" -- have become inseparable parts of the American heritage.