Tales of a Wayside Inn is a book of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was published in 1863. The book is set in a real place. That place was a tavern in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Longfellow lived 20 miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The inn was a favorite place for the people of Cambridge to go. The people in the book were real people, too. They were friends of Longfellow. In the book, they tell stories to each other while visitng the Wayside Inn. The best known poem is "Paul Revere's Ride". It begins: "Listen my children and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere."