“The Breaking Waves Dashed High”: Felicia Hemans, Romantic Poetry, and the Mayflower Voyage in Anglo-American Historical Culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1825, British Romantic poet Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) published “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England” in the New Monthly Magazine, where it rapidly gained widespread transatlantic popularity. Hemans's poem was subsequently republished in gift books, arranged as parlor music, and illustrated in new editions that maintained its appeal through the Victorian era and into the twentieth century. Her work popularized the term “Pilgrim Fathers,” redefining the 1620 Mayflower voyage and its Puritan separatists (previously referred to as “Brownist” emigrants) and shaping collective memory of this event for generations. This article traces Hemans's influence on subsequent literary and historical portrayals of the Pilgrim Fathers, revealing how her poem contributed to a shared Anglo-American cultural narrative. Within the framework of “historical culture” studies, the poem serves as a crucial example of what Martha Vandrei identifies as “the practices of knowing, interpreting, narrating, and creating” that shape our understanding of historical consciousness. Ultimately, “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England” inscribed a powerful vision into American cultural memory, defining one of the key myths of the modern world.