Lafcadio Hearn
Author
Language
English
Description
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"...
Author
Language
English
Description
The Japanese have two kinds of ghosts in their folklore-the spirits of the dead, and the spirits of the living. This classic of Japanese literature invites you to take your choice, if you dare. In Ghostly Japan collects twelve ghostly stories from Lafcadio Hearn, deathless images of ghosts and goblins, touches of folklore and superstition, salted with traditions of the nation. While some of these stories contain nightmare imagery worthy of a midnight...
Author
Language
English
Description
"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...
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Description
In Exotics and Retrospectives, Lafcadio Hearn plays the role not only of tour guide, but also dreamscaper. Whether through his narrative recounting of Japanese customs and traditional tales, or while sharing his personal observations and flights of fancy, Hearn's graceful and poetic prose enables the reader to enter a foreign world. Covering subjects from Buddhism to beauty to the color blue to being, he gently, honestly, and humorously lays bare...
Author
Language
English
Description
This delightful eBook presents seven pieces from the rich heritage of Lafcadio Hearn-one of the first and most preeminent scholars to travel to and write about Japan. They are a natural outgrowth of Hearn's peerless philosophy: "If you have any feeling-no matter what-strongly latent in the mind (even only a haunting sadness or a mysterious joy), you may be sure that it is expressible." Hearn's language, his incomparable prose, ripened and mellowed...
Author
Language
English
Description
Excerpt: "While engaged upon this little mosaic work of legend and fable, I felt much like one of those merchants told of in Sindbad's Second Voyage, who were obliged to content themselves with gathering the small jewels adhering to certain meat which eagles brought up from the Valley of Diamonds. I have had to depend altogether upon the labor of translators for my acquisitions, and these seemed too small to deserve separate literary setting. By cutting...
8) Shadowings
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Description
Kokoro, meaning "heart," "spirit," and "way of being" is a fitting title for this 1896 collection, for these fifteen essays focus on the interior life of Japan and its people. Hearn's insights into Japan's soul are unmatched by any Westerner, and his portraits of individual Japanese are as profound as his long essays on the civilization.
Author
Language
English
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Description
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'....
Author
Language
English
Description
Lafcadio Hearn's books have charmed and captivated readers, just as the exotic subjects about which he has written have captivated him. "Gleanings in the Buddha-Fields" presents more Hearn magic as he enters into the spirit of Buddhism as though he were born into it. This collection of stories, subtitled "Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East," takes the reader on a journey into the soul of Hearn's adopted land as no other writer-especially a non-Japanese...
Author
Language
English
Description
This classic text about Buddhism in Japan by Lafcadio Hearn-on of the first Westerns to write about Japan-will be of great interests to scholars and Japanophiles alike. Lafcadio Hearn's books continue to charm and captivate readers, as the exotic subjects about which he wrote charmed and captivated him. Gleanings In Buddha-Fields presents more Hearn magic as he enters into the spirit of Buddhism as though he were born into it. Hearn says that if he...
Author
Language
English
Description
The 15 classic essays collected in Kokoro examine the inner spiritual life of Japan. The title itself can be translated as "heart,""spirit" or "inner meaning," and that's exactly what this collection teaches us about Japan. Sometimes touching and always compelling, the writings here tell the stories of the people and social codes that make Japan the unique place it is. "Kimiko" paints the portrait of a beautiful geisha; "By Force of Karma" tells the...
Author
Language
English
Description
Chinese Ghost Stories are a selection of the most entertaining Chinese traditional tales of the strange and fantastic. Hearn had a great affinity for the traditional ghost stories of China, and these stories clearly inspired him as he penned subsequent works. Set in richly atmospheric locales, these tales speak of heroic sacrifice, chilling horror, eerie beauty and otherworldly intervention. This completely reset and pinyin-converted edition of Hearn's...
17) Books and Habits
Author
Language
English
Description
This collection of essays, individually published between 1915 and 1917, originated as lectures Hearn delivered to Japanese students at the University of Tokyo. They constitute one of the first attempts by a Western critic to interpret Western culture to the East. Chapters are dedicated to Western attitudes to women, poetry, the Bible, and an overview of Western literary influences.
Author
Language
English
Description
Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn by Lafcadio Hearn These chapters, for the most part, are reprinted from Lafcadio Hearn's "Interpretations of Literature," 1915, from his "Life and Literature," 1916, and from his "Appreciations of Poetry," 1917. Three chapters appear here for the first time. They are all taken from the student notes of Hearn's lectures at the University of Tokyo, 1896-1902, sufficiently described in the earlier...