Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana papers on Henri Barbusse and Sacco-Vanzetti

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Harry") Dana, Harvard AB 1903, AM 1904, PhD 1910 taught English at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) from 1908 to 1910 and comparative literature at Columbia University from 1912 to 1917, when he was dismissed for pacifist activities. Thereafter he continued to teach compartive literature and Russian studies at a variety of educational institutions and was deeply involved in progressive political activities, particularly in advancing the cause of global socialism and supporting labor unions and worker education. Throughout his life he traveled widely, living in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1928 and visiting major centers of European drama such as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest. The bulk of his literary oeuvre focused on Soviet drama; he also wrote a history of the Dana family, The Dana Saga, and produced an edition of the novel of his paternal grandfather, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast. Beginning in 1917, Dana was granted life tenancy of the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House at 105 Brattle St., Cambridge, Mass. and became its first curator when the residence was made a national monument and research center administered by the US National Park Service.