Event

"The Wreck of the Hesperus” in the National Literary Imagination

• 11/08/2018 Location: 105 Brattle Street, Time: 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM Fee Information: Free Contact Email: E-Mail Us Contact Phone Number: [phone]
  Penned in Boston in December of 1839 after three successive storms ravaged the northeastern seaboard, "The Wreck of the Hesperus" had profound effect on Cape Ann’s economic and cultural life. The national circulation of the poem played a central role in transforming the area from a working seaport to a tourist destination, replete with references not to a shipwreck that happened there, but instead to a poem that pretends it happened there. These newcomers bought land from formerly enslaved people and built, among other things, the Hesperus Hotel, just off of the newly-named Hesperus Avenue. Combining diary accounts of the December 1839 storm depicted in the poem, town records of an industry that grew up around the poem, and tourist ephemera that includes the poem, this talk calls upon local as well as national archival collections to trace how Longfellow, who had yet to visit the area when the poem was written, inadvertently became Cape Ann’s greatest tourist ambassador.
  
  Space is limited, so please call [phone] or email [e-mail] to reserve your spot!
  
  MOLLY O’HAGAN HARDY is the director of the library and archives at the Cape Ann Museum. Prior to that, she was the director for digital and book history initiatives at the American Antiquarian Society. Her work, both as an exhibition curator and digital humanities project director, centers on the study and remediation of pre1900 colonial and United States archival materials in the digital age. Her essays on these topics have appeared in CR: The New Centennial Review, Book History, Debates in Digital Humanities (2016), and American Literary History.