Lafcadio Hearn

Upon his arrival in Japan in 1890, Lafcadio Hearn found himself enamored with the culture, people, and stories of the country, and would make Japan his home until his death in 1904. His collections of stories published during this time became the most popular of Hearn's writings, and earned him veneration worldwide as not only a great translator of Japanese mythology, but as a sensational teller of strange and wonderfully macabre tales. "Kwaidan"...

Out of the East came wonderful tales by a Westerner who loved the old Japan-devotion, ancestor worship, courtesy, and kindness-and record his feelings for the rest of the world to read. This collection of "reveries and studies," as author and legendary Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn subtitled Out of the East, contains unforgettable tales like "The Red Bridal," in which the conflict between duty and human feelings leads to tragedy in classically Japanese...

"Sometimes the swamp-forest visibly thins away from these shores into wastes of reedy morass where, even of breathless nights, the quaggy soil trembles to a sound like thunder of breakers on a coast." Images are expertly imbued into the mind by vivid description. In Chita, Lafcadio Hearn paints life on a marshy, eclectic Gulf Coast island in the middle of the nineteenth century. Chita is a young white girl who is orphaned by a shipwreck and then...

An often referred to and well-respected account, mainly on Martinique, but also on Trinidad, St. Pierre, St. Kitt's, St. Lucia, Granada, etc. The author is most well-known for his works on Japan. A series of light, amusing and evocative sketches of Martinique at the end of the 19th-century. This tells of the two years the author lived in the West Indies in the late 1880's. An appendix includes some Creole melodies and the illustrations are interesting'....

This collection of essays and classic stories set in Japan by Lafcadio Hearn one of the earliest Westerners to write about Japan is an essential addition to any collection of Japanese literature. Shadowings is made up of three parts: "Stories from Strange Books," which presents sex old Japanese tales; "Japanese Studies," in which Hearn explores the lore of his adopted country; and "Fantasies," a group of essays in which he gives free rein to his wide-ranging...

This classic collection of Japanese ghost and folk stories is of enormous importance to the field of Japanese studies. Japanese curios, with sundry cobwebs, excite the curiosity and imagination of a master spinner of tales, and the result is Kotto, another Lafcadio Hearn classic about old Japan. Here Hearn spins tales from old Japanese books to illustrate some strange beliefs. They are only curios, he says laconically, but some of these legends will...

Written while was Hearn was a professor of English literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo, A Japanese Miscellany (1901) contains three sections: "Strange Stories,-Folklore Gleanings,"(with its beautiful dragonfly illustrations), and "Studies Here and There," which looks at unusual aspects of Japanese culture. Of special note is a delightful discussion of the traditional Daruma doll, including its toy manifestations.

A wonderful collection of spine-tingling ghost stories and thought-provoking essays on insects. This new version has an introduction "Hearn and Japan", which details the continuing influence of Hearn on contemporary Japan. This book contains 18 short stories and three essays on insects.

In 1924, Lafcadio Hearn took his love of culture and myth and introduced us to the world of Japanese folklore with Kwaidan, his own collection of ghost stories. In this classic volume, you'll find tales that are hauntingly lyrical and complex. Japanese demons that eat flesh. Ghostly brides returning for their lovers. Lafcadio Hearn's ghost stories have become a fixture in the world of Japanese lore and superstition, offering us an eerie taste...