At Bowdoin College, Pierce befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Pierce and Hawthorne were classmates and Longfellow graduated in the next class. Hawthorne produced novels and short stories, the best known being The Scarlet Letter. He also wrote a biography of his friend Pierce entitled The Life of Franklin Pierce (1852). Longfellow was a great poet known for such works as “Paul Revere’s Ride” and the “Song of Hiawatha.”