In the mid-nineteenth century, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow became the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy in its entirety — a distinction that set him apart among writers of his generation and reflected the breadth of languages in which he worked.

Born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Longfellow was educated at Bowdoin College before taking up work as a professor and educator. Over the course of his career he worked across multiple languages — English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Portuguese among them — which placed him in the role of translator as well as original writer. He was identified with the fireside poets, a grouping of writers from New England whose work circulated in the nineteenth century.

As a poet, Longfellow wrote Evangeline, The Song of Hiawatha, and "Paul Revere's Ride." His output extended beyond verse as well: the facts of his career identify him as a novelist and writer in addition to a poet, and his work as a translator drew on the range of languages he commanded. All of this was produced in the context of a life that began in Portland and ended in Cambridge, where he died on 24 March 1882.

Recognition came from outside the United States as well as within it. Longfellow received the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, an order conferred on figures in cultural and intellectual life. That he worked fluently across Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Portuguese — in addition to English — shaped both his translation practice and his standing as a writer. The translation of the Divine Comedy, the first complete rendering of that work by an American, remains the most precisely verifiable measure of the scope he brought to his career as a poet, educator, and translator.