Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), European-born American author, wrote novels and articles with exotic themes in highly precise and polished prose.

Lafcadio Hearn was born June 27, 1850, on the Greek island of Santa Maura. His mother was Maltese and his father a British army surgeon of Anglo-Irish extraction. When Hearn was 2, his mother abandoned him to an aunt in Dublin, who later sent him to St. Cuthbert's College to prepare for the priesthood. There he lost his left eye in an accident; he lost much of his religious faith as well. His other eye, strained by incessant reading, bulged badly.

At 19, extremely short, disfigured, and psychologically maimed, Hearn arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he eventually became a reporter for the Inquirer. In 1874 he married a local African American girl, breaking the Ohio laws against miscegenation. The marriage lasted 3 years and cost Hearn his job. Sent by another periodical to New Orleans, he found there the colorful, exotic ambience that would energize his pen.

By 1881 Hearn had become the successful literary editor of the New Orleans Times Democrat, to which he contributed local-color sketches, obscure folktales and legends, and translations of French writers. His first book, One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), was a perceptive translation of six Théophile Gautier stories. He also contributed to Harper's Weekly and the Century. His literary propensities were becoming more obvious; he was attracted by the romantic, strange, and grotesque, but he presented these against real backgrounds or with real people. He published a book of obscure legends and stories, Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884) and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887). He lived for 2 years in the West Indies, where he wrote his first novels, Chita (1889), a Rousseauesque romance, and Youma (1890), concerning a slave rebellion. Both narratives illustrate his deft, polished, precise prose and emphasis on description which often overshadow the brittle and abstract plot and characterization.

In 1890 Hearn was commissioned to go to Japan, but shortly after arriving there he quarreled with his publisher and found himself unemployed. For a while he taught English at a government school in Matsue and freelanced newspaper articles. His life in Japan was greatly enhanced by his marriage to Setsuko Koizumi, whose family adopted him. As Yakumo Koizumi, Hearn found his final nationality and an estimable academic position as professor of literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo. During this happy period Hearn composed his best prose—minute examinations of Japan, its people, and its folkways: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894); Kokoro (1896); Gleanings in Buddha-fields (1897); Exotics and Retrospectives (1898); In Ghostly Japan (1899); Shadowings (1900); and Kwaidan and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904). He died in Okubo, Japan, on Sept 26, 1904.

Further Reading

Vera S. McWilliams, Lafcadio Hearn (1946), is the important biography. Also useful are Elizabeth Stevenson, Lafcadio Hearn (1961), and Arthur E. Kunst, Lafcadio Hearn (1970). The authorized study by Elizabeth Bisland, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn (2 vols., 1906), contains indispensable material but appears more apologetic than definitive. For perceptive criticism see Nina H. Kennard, Lafcadio Hearn (1911), and Edward Larocque Tinker, Lafcadio Hearn's American Days (1924; 2d ed. 1925). P. D. and lone Perkins, Lafcadio Hearn: A Bibliography of His Writings (1934), is reliable but incomplete.

Additional Sources

Ball, Charles Edward, Lafcadio Hearn: an appreciation, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976.

Bellair, John, In Hearn's footsteps: journeys around the life of Lafcadio Hearn, Huntington, W. Va.: University Editions, 1994.

Cott, Jonathan, Wandering ghost: the odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn, New York: Knopf, 1991; New York: Kodansha International, 1992.

Dawson, Carl, Lafcadio Hearn and the vision of Japan, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Hearn, Lafcadio, The Japanese letters of Lafcadio Hearn, Wilmington, Del., Scholarly Resources 1973.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Lafcadio Hearn: Japan's great interpreter: a new anthology of his writings, 1894-1904, Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library; New York: Distributed in the U.S. by Talman Co., 1992.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Letters, New York: AMS Press, 1975.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Manuscripts, New York: AMS Press, 1975.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Some new letters and writings of Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa. Folcroft Library Editions, 1973.

Hearn, Lafcadio, Writings from Japan: an anthology, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books, 1984.

Hughes, Jon Christopher, The tanyard murder: on the case with Lafcadio Hearn, Washington: University Press of America, 1982.

Kennard, Nina H., Lafcadio Hearn; containing some letters from Lafcadio Hearn to his half-sister, Mrs. Atkinso, Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat Press 1967.

Koizumi, Setsu, Reminiscences of Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, c1978.

Kunst, Arthur E., Lafcadio Hearn, New York, Twayne Publishers c1969.

Noguchi, Yonâe, Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, Folcroft, Pa.,: Folcroft Library Editions, 1978.

Perkins, Percival Densmore, Lafcadio Hearn; a bibliography of his writing, New York: B. Franklin 1968.

Stevenson, Elizabeth, Lafcadio Hearn, New York: Octagon Books, 1979, 1961.

Thomas, Edward, Lafcadio Hearn, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977.

Thomas, Edward, Lafcadio Hearn, London: Constable; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1912.

Webb, Kathleen M., Lafcadio Hearn and his German critics: an examination of his appeal, New York: P. Lang, 1984. □

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904), born in the Ionian Islands, of Irish‐Greek parentage, was educated in France and England, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1869. Handicapped by poverty, semi‐blindness, a morbid inferiority complex, and a scandal resulting from his relations with a mulatto woman, he had an unsuccessful career as a journalist in Cincinnati, and then lived for a time in New Orleans, where he wrote Fantastics, a series of weird newspaper sketches. His first book, One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), stories translated from Gautier, was followed by Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884), reconstructing fantastically beautiful stories from the exotic literature which fascinated him; Gombo Zhêbes (1885), a collection of Negro‐French proverbs; and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887), beautifully polished Oriental legends. After a visit to Grand Isle, he wrote Chita: A Memory of Last Island (1889). Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) contains sketches based on his residence in Martinique (1887–89), from which he also drew material for his novel Youma (1890). During a brief residence in New York, he wrote Karma, a weak novel, and did some hackwork that enabled him to go to Japan (1890). There he spent the rest of his life, marrying the daughter of a Samurai family, and becoming a Japanese citizen under the name Koizumi Yakumo. As a schoolteacher in the small town of Matsue he observed the feudal customs described in his Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). For almost ten years he occupied the chair of English literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo, and his lectures were posthumously published from verbatim transcripts made by his students. During this period he wrote 12 books on the life, customs, flora, and fauna of his adopted country. His stories of Japan were frequently set in the form of essays, and among the volumes in which he best catches the mood of the place and the people, or in which he most successfully treats the supernatural, are Out of the East (1895), Kokoro (1896), In Ghostly Japan (1899), Shadowings (1900), A Japanese Miscellany (1901), Kottø (1902), Kwaidan (1904), and The Romance of the Milky Way (1905). Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) was the summation of his sympathetic and acute observations on the mind and the soul of the people among whom he had chosen to live.

Lafcadio Hearn , 1850–1904, American-Japanese author, b. Lefkás, Ionian Islands, of Irish-Greek parentage. He was educated in Ireland, England, and France before immigrating to the United States in 1869. Handicapped by partial blindness, Hearn was a colorful, imaginative, but morbidly discontented man, who was most admired for his sensitive use of language in writing about the macabre and in creating strange exotic moods. Hearn first attracted attention with the originality and highly polished style of his "Fantastics," a series of weird sketches that appeared in a New Orleans paper. His first published book was One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882), a translation of six Gautier stories. In 1890 he went to Japan to write a series of articles for an American publisher. There he spent the rest of his life, writing what is considered his best work. He married a Japanese woman, taught in Japanese universities, and became a Japanese citizen in 1895, taking the name Yakumo Koizumi. Of his 12 books written during this period, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Kokoro (1896), Japanese Fairy Tales (1902), and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) are most memorable.

Bibliography: See biography by E. Stevenson (1961).

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904), born in Santa Maura (Levkas) of Irish-Greek parentage, educated in England. He worked as a journalist in Cincinnati and incurred scandal by living openly with a mulatto woman. He then lived in Martinique, an experience which produced Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) and a novel, Youma (1890). In 1890 he went to Japan, where he married a Japanese wife and spent the rest of his life. He published several works which vividly evoke the landscapes, mythology, and customs of his adopted country, including Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894), Out of the East (1895), and Japan: an attempt at interpretation (1904).