This is the extended edition including an extensive primer on the author’s life and works as well as a detailed introductory note to the work itself.
Hyperion is the name of a prose romance, that the author wrote in 1839. The basis of it was the experience of Mr. Longfellow in Europe in 1835 and 1836. He left New York in the spring of 1835, accompanied by his wife and two friends; spent the summer in England and Northern Europe, but went to Rotterdam in the fall. There his wife died at the end of November. He travelled thence alone to Heidelberg, where he passed the winter, and in the following summer was in the Tyrol and Switzerland, returning to America in October, 1836. The route from Rotterdam to Heidelberg is precisely that of Paul Flemming, the book’s protagonist, while the studies of his hero in Heidelberg, his friendships and his excursions in the coming summer, correspond substantially with Mr. Longfellow’s own course, as indicated in his diary and letters.