Hyperion: A Romance is one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"s earliest works, published in 1839. It is a prose romance which was published alongside his first volume of poems, Voices of the Night.
Hyperion follows a young American protagonist named Paul Flemming as he travels through Germany. The character"s wandering is partially inspired by the death of a friend. The author had also recently lost someone close to him. Longfellow"s first wife, Mary Storer Potter, died in Rotterdam in the Netherlands after a miscarriage in 1836; Longfellow was deeply saddened by her death and noted in his diary: "All day I am weary and sad ... and at night I cry myself to sleep like a child."
Hyperion was inspired in part by his trips to Europe as well as his then-unsuccessful courtship of France...
