William Buehler Seabrook achieved fleeting celebrity with two of his ten books: The Magic Island (1929), one of the first revelations of the voodoo cults in backwoods Haiti that introduced the zombie to presumably civilized audiences, and Asylum (1935), an unsparing account of Seabrook's experiences in Bloomingdale Hospital, White Plains, New York, where he had voluntarily committed himself to be treated for acute alcoholism. Seabrook spent scattered years in France, but despite his many friendships in the American literary community, none of his books were about Paris, and only one grew out of his connections there.

Son of a poorly paid Lutheran minister who preached in small southern coastal towns, Seabrook was born in Westminster, Maryland, and attended Newberry College in South Carolina, graduating with a Ph.B. in 1905, followed by an A.M. in 1906. Upon graduation he worked for the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia and used his small savings...