The Song of Hiawatha - Softcover

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567922589 ISBN 13: 9781567922585

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2008

Synopsis

In the summer of 1854, Longfellow wrote in his diary "I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which seems to me the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions as whole." What emerged the next year was "The Song of Hiawatha," a composite of legends, folklore, myth, and characters that presents, in short, lilting lines (who can forget "By the shore of Gitche-Gumme / By the shining Big-Sea Water"?) the life-story of a real Indian, who provides the focus for the narrative thread of this epic drama of high adventure, tragedy and conflict. The aim was not to tell a particular or specific story but to unite the strands of various Indian legends, to present a sympathetic portrait of many Native American tribes, and especially to disclose their profound relationship with the natural world. This when both government policies and an expanding, land-hungry population were just beginning their inexorable campaign of displacement and annihilation.
The poem received a decidedly mixed reception. Our own Boston Traveler revealed its biases: "We cannot help but express our regret that our own pet national poet should not have selected as a theme of his muse something better and higher than the silly legends of the savage aborigines." Despite this, the poem entered into our canon of great narratives, and was revived again in 1891 when Remington, surely the most renowned artist of the West, provided with new pen and ink drawings.
This handsome new, and freshly reset, edition (the only unabridged version in print) presents the full text, includes the original Remington illustrations, and provides an index of the Indian names and their meanings.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This book is in Electronic Paperback© Format. If you view this book on any of the computer systems below, it will look like a book. Simple to run, no program to install. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and start reading. The simple easy to use interface is child tested at pre-school levels.

Windows 3.11, Windows/95, Windows/98, OS/2, MacIntosh PPC OS 8.1 or higher, and Linux with Windows Emulation.

Includes Quiet Vision's Dynamic Index. the abilty to build a index for any set of characters or words.

Each book is either read aloud by a actor or (for Window/95-98-ME and MacIntosh systems) by an electronic voice. For the electronic voice to work you must have TTS software installed. The Apple distributed TTS for MacIntosh: an SAPI compliant TTS for Windows.

About the Author:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), a professor of French and Spanish at Harvard University, was one of the first American academics to have a truly global interest in literature. He became convinced that America was in need of its own mythology, poeti Margaret Early was born in New South Wales, Australia. She studied in Australia and London, and is considered both a fine artist and an illustrator of note. Her work is displayed in one-woman shows in galleries across three continents. Among her previously

About this edition

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1567922589
• ISBN 13: 9781567922585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 283
• Illustrator: Remington Frederic