Nicholas Basbanes’s superbly sympathetic Cross of Snow is not, as his publisher claims, the first major Longfellow biography to appear in 50 years...But it is, perhaps, the biography Longfellow himself would have most liked to read. Absorbing the underlying message of Longfellow’s poetry, Mr. Basbanes writes about him the way a friend would, with generosity, gentleness and grace ... Mr. Basbanes never pummels his sources into revealing more than they will yield ... Buoyed by Mr. Basbane’s palpable enthusiasm over his discoveries, the reader feels warmly invited to enter the author’s charmed circle of friendship ... [focuses] much of his book on Longfellow’s far less buttoned-up second wife, the brilliant Fanny Appleton, daughter of one of the richest men in New England ... Mr. Basbanes’s singular achievement in Cross of Snow is to bring this remarkable woman back to life. He writes about her the way Longfellow would have, with respect, admiration and, yes, a lover’s eye. But he is also happy to let Fanny speak for herself ... Mr. Basbanes’s book, marvelously rich in biographical detail, has only limited space for the poetry. But much remains to be discovered there

Basbanes’s Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, then, is well timed, though it will chiefly interest three classes of reader ... First of all, it will appeal to those fascinated by 19th-century 'Boston Brahmin' culture and the interconnections among prominent New England families ... Second, the book is the portrait of a marriage, devoting considerable attention to Longfellow’s second wife, Fanny (his first died young) ... Third, Cross of Snow will attract those who like capacious biographies that emphasize primary materials ... Given the richness of Cross of Snow, it may seem churlish to point out what the book doesn’t do. To start with, it isn’t a “critical” biography: Basbanes pretty much ignores the poetry as poetry and provides no guidance to it. Rather he simply presents Longfellow as a man, husband, friend and cultural monument of 19th-century America ... Like any newspaperman, Basbanes helpfully identifies the many, often fascinating people mentioned in his text ... In the end, if you’re already interested in Longfellow’s life and milieu, Basbanes is definitely your man.

Nicholas A. Basbanes thinks that the tumble in Longfellow’s reputation was not the natural, inevitable result of changing tastes. In his new biography, Cross of Snow, he argues, on not much evidence, that Longfellow was done in by a cabal of modernists and New Critics who conspired to expel him from their snobbish, rarefied canon. So his book, which has at times a defensive, anti-elitist chip on its shoulder, is a rehab mission of sorts, and seeks to restore Longfellow in our present eyes mostly just by reminding us how important he was back in his own day ... Basbanes, who began as a newspaper reporter, is a painstaking researcher, the kind who turns every page, as Robert Caro would say, and he has benefited from access to lots of material previously unavailable. He is also the kind of researcher who, having discovered something, can’t bear not to cram it in ... At times it feels overstuffed and disproportionate ... And for all his effort Basbanes hasn’t discovered anything that seems likely to change our current estimation of Longfellow as someone who matters historically but is at best a minor writer.

Nicholas Basbanes tells the tale with diligence, affection, and an occasional note of special pleading ... the central drama of his life, and certainly the narrative at the heart of Basbanes’s biography, was about to begin. There would be another marriage ... Basbanes seems almost as infatuated with her as his subject was, putting Longfellow on the back burner for twenty pages while he narrates Fanny’s European sojourn of the mid-eighteen-thirties ... Basbanes seems to take Longfellow’s banishment rather personally.

Longfellow and his times are brought vividly to life by Nicholas A. Basbanes in his authoritative and wonderfully readable Cross of Snow ... Basbanes draws on a rich abundance of correspondence, diaries, journals and notebooks and gives readers generous excerpts from Longfellow and many others ... Basbanes uses his sources well, transporting readers beautifully to the world of a poet who is often overlooked. If you enjoy literary biography, this is a book to savor.

Basbanes is a seasoned writer on bookish subjects, a compassionate investigator, and Cross of Snow is a quietly superb Longfellow biography, fit to stand alongside its scandalously few predecessors ... a fast-paced and eloquent account of a man whose beautiful, knowing poetry has been made to seem as outdated as crinoline or starched collars. Poetry itself enjoys barely a fraction of the popularity today that it had when Longfellow was an international celebrity, and that tiny readership largely ignores him. It’s doubtful that any book, even one by an author as beloved as Basbanes, will be able to change that - the tenacious strength of snobbery being what it is - but bless him for trying.

Whitman is regrettably absent from Basbanes’s pages, although the two authors met ... Basbanes frequently interrupts his account of Longfellow’s life to catalog the furnishings in the Longfellow homestead ... Basbanes repeatedly draws attention to his research. He rummaged through the Longfellow House storage vaults and found a child’s pair of scuffed shoes, two portable traveling desks with folding tops, and a cast of the hand of the Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer ... There’s a certain charm to these numerous if distracting digressions. But the man who was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, apart from the cocoon of memorabilia and affection spun about him, remains something of a mystery ... As Basbanes perceptively suggests, Dante allowed Longfellow to articulate feelings that otherwise seemed too intimate or distressing[.]

A welcome new biography of the iconic 19th-century poet ... A revelatory exploration of Longfellow’s life and art and how he became a 'dominant force in American Letters.'

...[an] illuminating biography ... The devastating deaths of both his wives—Mary, his first, from miscarriage, and Fanny in a horrific fire—lead to striking portraits of grief. Basbanes notes that Longfellow’s reputation, demolished by early-20th-century literary modernists, has only recently begun to recover. This volume is an excellent addition to that worthy cause and is a captivating tale of a 'life lived well and lived in full.'