Sign for "Longfellow's Wayside Inn", where the collection takes place

Tales of a Wayside Inn is a collection of poems by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

[edit] Overview

First published in 1863, the poems in the collection are told by a group of adults in the tavern of the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The poem's Prelude begins:

"One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light...".

The best known inclusion is "Paul Revere's Ride". It also includes "The Saga of King Olaf".

[edit] Publication history and composition

Longfellow originally intended to call the collection The Sudbury Tales, but was afraid it sounded too similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and renamed it Tales of a Wayside Inn.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Tales of a Wayside Inn

• Tales of a Wayside Inn - The complete text (Project Gutenburg)

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