Collections And Critiques

One of the world's finest collections of books and magazine articles by and about Lafcadio Hearn, the Japanese-British writer, has been given to the Widener Library by Dr. Harris Kennedy '94, of Milton.

The 600 volumes and 250 magazine and newspaper articles composing the collection were gathered by Dr. Kennedy during years of research. There are not only editions and variations, including translations of Hearn's own writings, but also numerous articles about him.

Among the most valuable of the first editions of Hearn's works is a yellow-bound copy of "Some Chinese Ghosts," published in Boston by Roberts Brothers in 1887. Most of the edition was destroyed by the publisher immediately after the printing over a misunderstanding with the author and very few copies remain.

Probably the rarest single item in the collection is a copy of "Letters from Shimane and Kyushu" by Hearn. Of the 100 volumes published in Japan 70 never left the country. There are also fine modern editions of Hearn's works and translations in French, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and German.

Hearn was one of the most romantic figures of English letters during the last century. Born of an Irish father and a Greek mother on a small Grocian Island in 1850, he came to America at nineteen. Here he worked as a reporter in New York, Cinebmail, New Orleans, and the West Indies.

In 1890 he journeyed to Japan and became so entranced with the country that he cancelled his contract with Harper Brothers and took up teaching. After several years, Hearn married a Japanese Samuri woman and became a Japanese citizen by adoption into his wife's family.

At the time of his death in 1904, Hearn held a professorship at Waseda University.