Stoddard, Charles Warren

Stoddard, Charles Warren (1843–1909),California author, whose Poems (1867), edited by Bret Harte, preceded his wide travels that furnished material for his more famous works. Before 1873 he made two trips to Hawaii and one to Tahiti, resulting in the sketches South‐Sea Idyls (1873; English edition, Summer Cruising in the South Seas, 1874), which range from delicately tinted description to the lush prose which caused him to be compared with Pierre Loti. His voyage to Egypt and the Holy Land (1876–77) formed the basis for his narratives Mashallah! (1880) and A Cruise Under the Crescent (1898). He returned to live in Hawaii (1881–84), where he wrote The Lepers of Molokai (1885), first calling public attention to Father Damien and probably prompting his friend Stevenson to write his famous defense of the missionary. Other books resulting from this residence were Hawaiian Life (1894) and The Island of Tranquil Delights (1904). While in Hawaii he also wrote A Troubled Heart (1885), the story of his conversion to Catholicism. Upon his return he was a professor of English at the University of Notre Dame (1885–86) and at the Catholic University of America (1889–1902). His last years were spent in California, where, among other books, he wrote In the Footsteps of the Padres (1902). A posthumous collection of his Poems was made by Ina Coolbrith (1917), and Diary of a Visit to Molokai in 1884 was published in 1933.