Which American Romantic poet translated Dante's 'Divine Comedy'?

The American Romantic poet who translated Dante’s Divine Comedy was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Longfellow’s complete translation appeared in 1867, making him the first American author to translate the entire poem. His version used unrhymed tercets, a form that echoed Dante’s three-line stanzas while avoiding the difficulty of reproducing the original Italian rhyme scheme in English.

The Divine Comedy was written by Dante Alighieri in the early 14th century and follows a fictional journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Longfellow translated it while teaching and writing in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his work helped make Dante much more familiar to American readers.

A common mix-up is Henry Francis Cary, an English translator whose influential version appeared earlier, between 1805 and 1814. Longfellow was not the first English translator; he was the first American to complete the poem. His own best-known original poems include “Paul Revere’s Ride,” Evangeline, and The Song of Hiawatha.