About the title
A film about the life and work of the 19th-century American poet Henry Longfellow. His lines for the Christmas carol "I heard the bells on Christmas Day...", written in 1863, are still sung every Christmas in the United States to this day. Meanwhile, 1863 was perhaps the hardest year of Longfellow's life. A couple of years earlier, his wife Frances had died in a tragic accident. And the poet's son was severely wounded during the American Civil War. This story, however, begins three years before these events, when Longfellow's family was still alive and well, and he himself was full of the brightest hopes for the future.