At the turn of the century Lafcadio Hearn was considered one of the finest prose stylists in the United States. His enormous output ranges from early articles written for Cincinnati newspapers to a series of volumes on Japan, the country where he spent the final fifteen years of his life. It is Hearn's work on Japan that has maintained his literary reputation although the locales of his travel writing include New Orleans and the French West Indies as well as Japan. In a relatively short life of fifty-four years Hearn managed to live several different literary lives.

Patrick Lafcadio Tessima Hearn was born on the Ionian island of Santa Maura on 27 June 1850. His father, Charles Bush Hearn, was an Irish surgeon-major stationed in Greece with the British army. His Greek mother, Rosa Tessima, named him Lafcadio after Lefkada, the Greek name for Santa Maura. When Hearn was two...