Editing Lafcadio Hearn (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on 27 June 1850 on the [[Ionian Islands|Ionian Island]] of [[Lefkada]], then part of a [[British protectorate]], the [[United States of the Ionian Islands]], now part of Greece.<ref name="BISLAND">{{cite book |last=Bisland |first=Elizabeth |url= |title=The life and letters of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin |year=1906 |isbn=9781115291613 |volume=1 |location=Boston |pages=3}}</ref> His mother was a [[Greeks|Greek]] named Rosa Cassimati, a native of the Greek island of [[Kythera]],<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Hirakawa |first=Sukehiro |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tfV5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17 |title=Lafcadio Hearn in International Perspectives |date=2007-03-29 |publisher=[[Global Oriental]] |isbn=978-90-04-21347-0 |pages=17, 125 |language=en}}</ref> while his father, [[Royal Army Medical Corps#Officer ranks|Staff Surgeon of the Second Class]] Charles Bush Hearn, a [[British Army]] medical officer, was of [[Irish people|Irish]] and [[English people|English]] descent,<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Kennard|first=Nina H.|url=http://archive.org/details/lafcadiohearn01kenn|title=Lafcadio Hearn|date=1912|publisher=New York, D. Appleton and Company|others=The Library of Congress|pages=2}}</ref> who was stationed in Lefkada during the British protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands. Throughout his life, Lafcadio boasted of his Greek blood and felt a passionate connection to Greece.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Marra|first=Michael F.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_P330pBK2PoC&pg=PA136|title=A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics|date=2001-02-01|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|isbn=978-0-8248-2399-3|pages=136|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Babb|first=James|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J9J7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA195|title=Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia|date=2019-01-04|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-37071-5|pages=195|language=en}}</ref> He was baptized Patrikios Lefcadios Hearn ([[Greek language|Greek]]: Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χερν) in the [[Greek Orthodox Church]], but he seems to have been called "Patrick Lefcadio Kassimati Charles Hearn" in English; the middle name "Lafcadio" was given to him in honour of the island where he was born.<ref name=KENNARD>According to one of his biographers, a family Bible records 'Patricio Lafcadio Tessima Carlos Hearn, August 1850.' {{cite book | title = Lafcadio Hearn | url = https://archive.org/details/lafcadiohearn01kenn | last=Kennard | first=Nina H.|location= New York | publisher= D. Appleton and Co.| year=1912}}</ref> Hearn's parents were married in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on 25 November 1849, several months after his mother had given birth to Hearn's older brother, George Robert Hearn, on 24 July 1849. George died on 17 August 1850, two months after Lafcadio's birth.<ref name="COTT">{{cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |location=New York |pages=11 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

====Emigration to Ireland and abandonment====
[[File:Commemorative plaque to Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), 48 Gardiner Street Lower, Dublin, Ireland. Detail.JPG|thumb|Plaque on Hearn's home on [[Gardiner Street]], [[Dublin]]]]
Hearn's father Charles in 1850 was reassigned from Lefkada to the [[British West Indies]]. Since his family did not approve of the marriage, and because he was worried that his relationship might harm his career prospects, Charles did not inform his superiors of his son or pregnant wife and left his family behind. In 1852, he arranged to send his son and wife to live with his family in [[Dublin]], where they received a cool reception. Charles's Protestant mother, Elizabeth Holmes Hearn, had difficulty accepting Rosa's Greek Orthodox views and lack of education; she was illiterate and spoke no English. Rosa found it difficult to adapt to a foreign culture and the Protestantism of her husband's family, and was eventually taken under the wing of Elizabeth's sister, Sarah Holmes Brenane, a widow who had converted to Catholicism.

Despite Sarah's efforts, Rosa suffered from homesickness. When her husband returned to Ireland on medical leave in 1853, it became clear that the couple had become estranged. Charles Hearn was assigned to the [[Crimean Peninsula]], again leaving his pregnant wife and child in Ireland. When he came back in 1856, severely wounded and traumatized, Rosa had returned to her home island of [[Cerigo]] (Kythera), where she gave birth to their third son, Daniel James Hearn. Lafcadio had been left in the care of Sarah Brenane.

Charles petitioned to have the marriage with Rosa annulled, on the grounds that she had not signed their marriage contract, which made it invalid under English law. After being informed of the annulment, Rosa almost immediately married Giovanni Cavallini, a Greek citizen of Italian ancestry, who was later appointed by the British as governor of [[Cerigotto]] (Antikythera). Cavallini required as a condition of the marriage that Rosa give up custody of both sons. As a result, James was sent to his father in Dublin while Lafcadio remained in the care of his great aunt, Sarah Brenane, who had disinherited Charles because of the annulment. Neither Lafcadio nor James ever again saw their mother, who had four children with her second husband. Rosa was eventually committed to the National Mental Asylum on [[Corfu]], where she died in 1882.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=14–15 |language= |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Charles Hearn, who had left Lafcadio in the care of Sarah Brenane for the past four years, now appointed her as Lafcadio's permanent guardian. He married his childhood sweetheart, Alicia Goslin, in July 1857, and left with his new wife for a posting in [[Secunderabad]], a city in India, where they had three daughters prior to Alicia's death in 1861.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mikXAQAAMAAJ |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |date=1991 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |pages=17 |language=en |quote="(Hearn, who had three daughters with Alicia, died of malaria in the Gulf of Suez on November 21, 1866.)" |url-access=registration}}</ref> Lafcadio never saw his father again: Charles Hearn died of malaria in the [[Gulf of Suez]] in 1866.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=17–18 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

In 1857, at age seven and despite the fact that both his parents were still alive, Hearn became the permanent [[Ward (law)|ward]] of Sarah Brenane. She divided her residency between Dublin in the winter months, and her husband's estate at [[Tramore]], [[County Waterford]], on the southern Irish coast, and a house at [[Bangor, Gwynedd|Bangor]] in North Wales. Brenane engaged a tutor during the school year to provide Hearn with basic instruction and the rudiments of Catholic dogma. Hearn began exploring Brenane's library and read extensively in Greek literature, especially myths.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=18–20 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

====Catholic education and more abandonment====
[[File:Ye Giglampz.jpg|thumb|The first issue of ''Ye Giglampz'', a satirical weekly published in 1874 by Hearn and Henry Farny]]
In 1861, his great aunt, aware that Hearn was turning away from Catholicism and at the urging of Henry Hearn Molyneux, a relative of her late husband, he was sent to a Catholic college in France, but was disgusted with the life and gave up the Roman Catholic faith. He became fluent in French and would later translate into English the works of [[Guy de Maupassant]] and [[Gustave Flaubert]].

In 1863, again at the suggestion of Molyneux, Hearn was enrolled at [[St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw]], a Catholic [[seminary]] in [[County Durham]], England. In this environment, Hearn adopted the nickname "Paddy" to try to fit in better, and was the top student in English composition for three years.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=26 |url-access=registration}}</ref> At age 16, while at Ushaw, Hearn injured his left eye. The eye became infected and, despite consultations with specialists in Dublin and London, and a year spent out of school convalescing, the eye went blind. Hearn also suffered from severe [[myopia]], so his injury left him permanently with poor vision, requiring him to carry a magnifying glass for close work and a pocket telescope to see anything beyond a short distance. Hearn avoided eyeglasses, believing they would weaken his vision further. The iris was permanently discoloured, and left Hearn self-conscious about his appearance for the rest of his life, causing him to cover his left eye while conversing and always posing for the camera in profile so that the left eye was not visible.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bisland |first=Elizabeth |title=The life and letters of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin |year=1906 |isbn=9781115291613 |volume=1 |location=Boston |pages=35}}</ref>

In 1867, Henry Molyneux, who had become Sarah Brenane's financial manager, went bankrupt, along with Brenane. As there was no money for tuition, Hearn was sent to London's East End to live with Brenane's former maid. She and her husband had little time or money for Hearn, who wandered the streets, spent time in workhouses, and generally lived an aimless, rootless existence. His main intellectual activities consisted of visits to libraries and the [[British Museum]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=29–30 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

===Immigration to Cincinnati===
By 1869, Henry Molyneux had recovered some financial stability and Brenane, now 75, was infirm. Resolving to end his financial obligations to the 19-year-old Hearn, he purchased a one-way ticket to New York and instructed the young man to find his way to [[Cincinnati]], where he could locate Molyneux's sister and her husband, Thomas Cullinan, and obtain their assistance in making a living. Upon meeting Hearn in Cincinnati, however, it became clear that the family wanted little to do with him: Cullinan all but threw him out into the streets with only $5 in his pocket. As Hearn would later write, "I was dropped moneyless on the pavement of an American city to begin life."<ref name="AMERICA">{{cite book |title=Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings |publisher=Library of America |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-59853-039-1 |editor=Christopher Benfey |location=New York |pages=818}}</ref>

For a time, he was impoverished, living in stables or store rooms in exchange for menial labor.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uQg9XG6I9CsC&q=vas+you+ever+in+zinzinnati&pg=PA25 | title=Legendary Locals of Cincinnati | publisher=Arcadia Publishing | date=4 January 2012 | access-date= 7 May 2013 | last = Grace | first = Kevin | page =25| isbn=9781467100021 }}</ref> He eventually befriended the English printer and [[Municipal socialism|communalist]] [[Henry Watkin]], who employed him in his printing business, helped find him various odd jobs, lent him books from his library, including utopianists [[Charles Fourier]], [[Hepworth Dixon]] and [[John Humphrey Noyes]], and gave Hearn a nickname which stuck with him for the rest of his life, [[the Raven]], from the [[Edgar Allan Poe]] poem. Hearn also frequented the [[Cincinnati Public Library]], which at that time had an estimated 50,000 volumes. In the spring of 1871 a letter from Henry Molyneux informed him of Sarah Brenane's death and Molyneux's appointment as sole executor. Despite Brenane having named him as the beneficiary of an annuity when she became his guardian, Hearn received nothing from the estate and never heard from Molyneux again.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=36–37 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

====Newspaper and literary work====
[[File:Char - Coal 1880-08-25.jpg|right|thumb|Char-Coal: Cartoon published in ''New Orleans Daily Item'' on 25 August 1880]]
By the strength of his talent as a writer, Hearn obtained a job as a reporter for the ''[[Cincinnati Enquirer|Cincinnati Daily Enquirer]]'', working for the newspaper from 1872 to 1875. Writing with creative freedom in one of Cincinnati's largest circulating newspapers, he became known for his lurid accounts of local murders, developing a reputation as the paper's premier sensational journalist, as well as the author of sensitive accounts of some of the disadvantaged people of Cincinnati. ''[[The Library of America]]'' selected one of these murder accounts, ''Gibbeted,'' for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of ''American True Crime'', published in 2008.<ref>{{cite book | title = True Crime: An American Anthology | editor = Harold Schechter | year = 2008 | publisher = Library of America | isbn = 978-1-59853-031-5 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/truecrimeamerica00haro/page/117 117–130] | url = https://archive.org/details/truecrimeamerica00haro/page/117 }}</ref> After one of his murder stories, the Tanyard Murder, had run for several months in 1874, Hearn established his reputation as Cincinnati's most audacious journalist, and the ''Enquirer'' raised his salary from $10 to $25 per week.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=54 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

In 1874, Hearn and the young [[Henry Farny]], later a renowned painter of the American West, wrote, illustrated, and published an 8-page weekly journal of art, literature and satire entitled ''Ye Giglampz.'' The Cincinnati Public Library reprinted a facsimile of all nine issues in 1983.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://digital.cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll8/id/5311 | title=Ye Giglampz }}</ref> The work was considered by a 20th-century critic to be "Perhaps the most fascinating sustained project he undertook as an editor."<ref>{{cite journal | journal = American Literary Realism, 1870–1910 | title = "Ye Giglampz" and the Apprenticeship of Lafcadio Hearn | volume = 15 | number = 2 | date = Autumn 1982 | pages = 182–194 | author = Jon Christopher Hughes |publisher = University of Illinois Press | jstor = 27746052}}</ref>

====Marriage and firing by the ''Enquirer''====
On 14 June 1874, Hearn, aged 23, married Alethea ("Mattie") Foley, a 20-year-old African American woman, and former slave, an action in violation of Ohio's [[Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States|anti-miscegenation law]] at that time. In August 1875, in response to complaints from a local clergyman about his anti-religious views and pressure from local politicians embarrassed by some of his satirical writing in ''Ye Giglampz,'' the ''Enquirer'' fired him, citing as its reason his [[illegal marriage]]. He went to work for the rival newspaper ''The Cincinnati Commercial.'' The ''Enquirer'' offered to re-hire him after his stories began appearing in the ''Commercial'' and its circulation began increasing, but Hearn, incensed at the paper's behavior, refused. Hearn and Foley separated, but attempted reconciliation several times before divorcing in 1877. Foley remarried in 1880.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location= |pages=82 |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=89 |url-access=registration}}</ref> While working for the ''Commercial'' he championed the case of [[Henrietta Wood]], a former slave who won a major reparations case.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Trent|first=Sydney|date=February 24, 2021|title=She sued her enslaver for reparations and won. Her descendants never knew.|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/24/henrietta-wood-reparations-slavery/|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref>

While working for the ''Commercial'' Hearn agreed to be carried to the top of Cincinnati's tallest building on the back of a famous [[steeplejack]], Joseph Roderiguez Weston, and wrote a half-terrified, half-comic account of the experience. Hearn wrote a series of accounts of the Bucktown and Levee neighborhoods of Cincinnati, "...one of the few depictions we have of black life in a border city during the post-Civil War period."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=98 |url-access=registration}}</ref> He also wrote about local black song lyrics from the era, including a song titled "Shiloh" that was dedicated to a Bucktown resident named "Limber Jim."<ref name=GALE>{{cite book| title = A Lafcadio Hearn Companion | pages= 179–180 |last = Gale | first = Robert | year = 2002 | publisher = Greenwood Press | isbn = 0-313-31737-2}}</ref> In addition, Hearn had printed in the ''Commercial'' a stanza he had overheard when listening to the songs of the [[roustabout]]s, working on the city's levee waterfront. Similar stanzas were recorded in song by [[Julius Daniels]] in 1926 and [[Tommy McClennan]] in his version of "[[Bottle Up and Go]]" (1939).<ref>{{cite book|title=The Devil's Music|author=Giles Oakley|publisher=[[Da Capo Press]]|page=[https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/37 37]|isbn=978-0-306-80743-5|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/devilsmusichisto00oakl_0/page/37}}</ref>

===Move to New Orleans===
[[File:Alligators 1880-09-13.jpg|left|thumb|Alligators: Cartoon published in ''New Orleans Daily Item'' on 13 September 1880]]
During the autumn of 1877, recently divorced from Mattie Foley and restless, Hearn had begun neglecting his newspaper work in favor of translating works by the French author [[Théophile Gautier]] into English. He had grown disenchanted with Cincinnati, writing to Henry Watkin, "It is time for a fellow to get out of Cincinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of America." With the support of Watkin and ''Cincinnati Commercial'' publisher [[Murat Halstead]], Hearn left Cincinnati for [[New Orleans]], where he initially wrote dispatches on the "Gateway to the Tropics" for the ''Commercial''.

Hearn lived in New Orleans for nearly a decade, writing first for the newspaper ''Daily City Item'' beginning in June 1878, and later for the ''Times Democrat''. Since the ''Item'' was a 4-page publication, Hearn's editorial work changed the character of the newspaper dramatically. He began at the ''Item'' as a news editor, expanding to include book reviews of [[Bret Harte]] and [[Émile Zola]], summaries of pieces in national magazines such as ''[[Harper's Weekly|Harper's]]'', and editorial pieces introducing Buddhism and Sanskrit writings. As editor, Hearn created and published nearly two hundred woodcuts of daily life and people in New Orleans, making the ''Item'' the first Southern newspaper to introduce cartoons and giving the paper an immediate boost in circulation. Hearn gave up carving the woodcuts after six months when he found the strain was too great for his eye.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=134 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

[[File:Hearn House NOLA Cleveland Front.jpg|right|thumb|Hearn's former home on Cleveland Avenue in [[New Orleans]] is preserved as a registered historic place.]]

At the end of 1881, Hearn took an editorial position with the New Orleans ''[[The Times-Picayune|Times Democrat]]'' and was employed translating items from French and Spanish newspapers as well as writing editorials and cultural reviews on topics of his choice. He also continued his work translating French authors into English: [[Gérard de Nerval]], [[Anatole France]], and most notably [[Pierre Loti]], an author who influenced Hearn's own writing style.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=130–131 |url-access=registration}}</ref> Milton Bronner, who edited Hearn's letters to [[Henry Watkin]], wrote: "[T]he Hearn of New Orleans was the father of the Hearn of the West Indies and of Japan," and this view was endorsed by Norman Foerster.<ref>Norman Foerster (1934), ''American Poetry and Prose'', Revised and Enlarged Edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 1149; Hearn, Lafcadio (1907), ''Letters from the Raven: Being the Correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with [[Henry Watkin]]'', ed., Milton Bronner, New York: [[Brentano's]].</ref> During his tenure at the ''Times Democrat'', Hearn developed a friendship with editor Page Baker, who went on to champion Hearn's literary career; their correspondence is archived at the [[Loyola University New Orleans]] Special Collections & Archives.<ref>{{cite web |title=Lafcadio Hearn Correspondence Finding Aid |url=http://library.loyno.edu/assets/handouts/archives/Collection_5_Hearn.pdf |website=J. Edgar & Louise S. Monroe Library, Loyola University New Orleans |access-date=16 July 2018 |archive-date=8 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180608172636/http://library.loyno.edu/assets/handouts/archives/Collection_5_Hearn.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The vast number of his writings about New Orleans and its environs, many of which have not been collected, include the city's [[Louisiana Creole people|Creole]] population and distinctive cuisine, the French Opera, and [[Louisiana Voodoo]]. Hearn wrote enthusiastically of New Orleans, but also wrote of the city's decay, "a dead bride crowned with orange flowers".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cott |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingghostod00cott |title=Wandering Ghost: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn |publisher=Knopf |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-394-57152-2 |edition= |location=New York |pages=118 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Hearn's writings for national publications, such as ''[[Harper's Weekly]]'' and ''[[Scribner's Magazine]]'', helped create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinctive culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. Hearn's best-known Louisiana works include: 
* ''Gombo zhèbes: Little dictionary of Creole proverbs'' (1885)
* ''La Cuisine Créole'' (1885), a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives who helped make New Orleans famous for its cuisine
* ''Chita: A Memory of Last Island'' (1889), a novella based on the [[1856 Last Island Hurricane|hurricane of 1856]] first published in ''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's Monthly]]'' in 1888

Hearn published in ''Harper's Weekly'' the first known written article (1883) about [[Filipino American#History|Filipinos in the United States]], the Manilamen or [[Tagalog people|Tagalogs]], one of whose villages he had visited at [[Saint Malo, Louisiana|Saint Malo]], southeast of [[Lake Borgne]] in [[St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana]].

At the time he lived there, Hearn was little known, and even now he is little known for his writing about New Orleans, except by local cultural devotees. However, more books have been written about him than any former resident of New Orleans except [[Louis Armstrong]].<ref>{{cite news | title = A chronicle of Creole cuisine | url = http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/food/side/4544683.html | location = Houston| date= 14 February 2007 | author= Peggy Grodinsky|newspaper = Chronicle}}.</ref>

Hearn's writings for the New Orleans newspapers included impressionistic descriptions of places and characters and many editorials denouncing political corruption, street crime, violence, intolerance, and the failures of public health and hygiene officials. Despite the fact that he is credited with "inventing" New Orleans as an exotic and mysterious place, his obituaries of the [[Louisiana voodoo|vodou]] leaders [[Marie Laveau]] and Doctor John Montenet are matter-of-fact and debunking. Selections of Hearn's New Orleans writings have been collected and published in several works, starting with ''Creole Sketches''<ref>{{cite book | title= Creole Sketches | url= https://archive.org/details/creolesketches017017mbp | author = Lafcadio Hearn | editor = Charles Woodward Hutson | location = Boston | publisher = Houghton Mifflin Co. | year=1924|oclc= 2403347}}</ref> in 1924, and more recently in ''Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn.''<ref>{{cite book| last = Starr| first= S. Frederick |year=2001| title = Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn| publisher= University Press of Mississippi | isbn=1-57806-353-1}}</ref>

===Move to the French West Indies===
[[File:Lafcadio Hearn.jpg|170px|thumb|Hearn with his wife Setsuko—he preferred to hide his injured left eye in pictures.]]
''[[Harper's Magazine|Harper's]]'' sent Hearn to the [[Caribbean|West Indies]] as a correspondent in 1887. He spent two years in [[Martinique]] and in addition to his writings for the magazine, produced two books: ''Two Years in the French West Indies'' and ''Youma, The Story of a West-Indian Slave'', both published in 1890.<ref>{{cite web|title=Two Years in the French West Indies|url=https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4396/|website=World Digital Library|access-date=22 August 2017|year=1890}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Hearn|first1=Lafcadio|title=Youma: Story of a Western Indian Slave|date=1890|publisher=Harper & Brothers|location=New York|isbn=9781404767379|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ykwLAAAAIAAJ}}</ref>

===Later life in Japan===
In 1890, Hearn went to Japan with a commission as a newspaper correspondent, which was quickly terminated. It was in Japan, however, that he found a home and his greatest inspiration. Through the good will of [[Basil Hall Chamberlain]], Hearn gained a teaching position during the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in [[Matsue, Shimane|Matsue]], a town in western Japan on the coast of the [[Sea of Japan]]. During his fifteen-month stay in Matsue, Hearn married [[Koizumi Setsuko]], the daughter of a local [[samurai]] family, with whom he had four children: Kazuo, Iwao, Kiyoshi, and Suzuko.<ref>Kazuo, Iwao, Kiyoshi, and Suzuko: Katharine Chubbuck, 'Hearn, (Patricio) Lafcadio Carlos (1850–1904)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004</ref> He became a [[Japanese citizen]], assuming the legal name Koizumi Yakumo in 1896 after accepting a teaching position in Tokyo; Koizumi is [[Mukoyōshi|his wife's surname]] and Yakumo is from ''yakumotatsu'', a poetic modifier word (''[[makurakotoba]]'') for [[Izumo Province]], which he translated<ref>In a September 1895 letter to Ellwood Hendrick.<!-- The date on the letter does not explicitly contradict our text, as Hearn says that as of September 1895 he is "waiting" to have his name legally changed. --></ref> as "the Place of the Issuing of Clouds". After having been Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and, later on, [[Herbert Spencer|Spencerian]], he became [[Japanese Buddhism|Buddhist]].<ref>Norman Foerster (1934), ''American Poetry and Prose'', Revised and Enlarged Edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 1149.</ref>

During late 1891, Hearn obtained another teaching position in [[Kumamoto]], at the Fifth High Middle School (a predecessor of [[Kumamoto University]]), where he spent the next three years and completed his book ''[[Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (first series)|Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan]]'' (1894). In October 1894, he secured a journalism job with the English-language newspaper ''Kobe Chronicle'', and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching [[English literature]] at [[Tokyo Imperial University]], a job he had until 1903. In 1904, he was a lecturer at [[Waseda University]].

While in Japan, he encountered the art of [[ju-jutsu]] which made a deep impression upon him: "Hearn, who encountered judo in Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, contemplated its concepts with the awed tones of an explorer staring about him in an extraordinary and undiscovered land. "What Western brain could have elaborated this strange teaching, never to oppose force by force, but only direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely through his own strength, to vanquish him solely by his own efforts? Surely none! The Western mind appears to work in straight lines; the Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Law|first1=Mark|title=The Pyjama Game: A Journey Into Judo|date=2007|publisher=Aurum Press Ltd|location=London|page=41|edition=2008|url=http://thepyjamagame.com/}}</ref> When he was teaching at the Fifth High Middle School, the headmaster was founder of Judo [[Kano Jigoro]].