Born 204 years ago today, the rock-star poet of 19th-century America, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There is no mention, in Hershel Parker's biography of Melville, of Herman ever having met Henry. However, Mr. Parker reports that Longfellow and his second wife, Fanny, read Omoo aloud together. In a letter to her father, Fanny wrote, "...[we read] through Omoo which is very inferior to Typee..."
Longfellow died in 1882, so he certainly could have read M-D.
(If you're ever in Cambridge, MA, a tour of the Longfellow House, led by a well-informed National Park Service guide, is very worthwhile.)
