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A Fantastic Journey: The Life and Literature of Lafcadio Hearn
As well as providing a much needed perspective on Hearn's Japan years, this study offers a much more informed view of Hearn's life, times and writings than seen before.
408 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Paul A. Murray
7 books3 followersPaul Murray is a writer and Irish diplomat.
Mr. Murray was born in Carlow, Ireland in 1949. He completed his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received a Masters in history and political science.
Mr. Murray is author of biographies on Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker. In 1995 he won the Koizumi Yakumo Literary Prize.
He entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972 and has since served in London, Tokyo, Ottawa, New York, Paris and Seoul.
From summer 2004 for two years Mr. Murray was the head of the EU Division at the Ministry in Dublin.
Paul Murray was appointed as Permanent Representative of Ireland to the Organization for Economic Co-operation in November 2006.
Mr. Murray was born in Carlow, Ireland in 1949. He completed his studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received a Masters in history and political science.
Mr. Murray is author of biographies on Lafcadio Hearn and Bram Stoker. In 1995 he won the Koizumi Yakumo Literary Prize.
He entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1972 and has since served in London, Tokyo, Ottawa, New York, Paris and Seoul.
From summer 2004 for two years Mr. Murray was the head of the EU Division at the Ministry in Dublin.
Paul Murray was appointed as Permanent Representative of Ireland to the Organization for Economic Co-operation in November 2006.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 4, 2025
This biography of Lafcadio Hearn takes us from his difficult childhood to later life in Japan where he became one of the first foreign writers to interpret Japanese culture and legends to a western audience. On the way he experienced poverty and many hardships (some of them seemingly self-inflicted), gradually moving from journalism to his own writing, travellers tales and interpreting fairy tales and ghost stories. He had a fascination with Gothic horror. His writing was probably influenced by Edgar Allen Poe and contemporaries such as Bram Stoker. He was often dependent on his many literary friends and frequently fell out with them. I am attempting to do justice to his life and works in the quick summary that follows in the next paragraph.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada (hence his name) to an Anglo-Irish father, a doctor in the British army, and a Greek mother. The family split up and he was raised by various aunts in Ireland before being sent away to a private school in England. In school he excelled at English, French and Latin but had to drop out due to family bankruptcy. He spent a year in poverty in London before moving to Cincinnati. After early struggles, he befriended a newspaper publisher, which led to a job as a crime reporter. His gruesome accounts of murders were popular with the readers. He always had literary aspirations and translated French romantic literature which was often not to the taste of puritanical readers. He moved to New Orleans, Martinique and then aged 40 to Japan where he spent the last fourteen years of his life. He married Koizumi Setsuko, who helped him translate Japanese fairy stories and legends, which he polished for western readers. He considered Eastern traditional values to be superior to those of the industrialised west. He died in Japan aged 54.
This biography was written by Paul Murray who was Irish ambassador to Japan. In recent years interest in Lafcadio Hearn's life and work has been rekindled in Ireland. A memorial Japanese garden has been created in Tramore, County Waterford where he lived for a while as a boy.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born on the Greek island of Lefkada (hence his name) to an Anglo-Irish father, a doctor in the British army, and a Greek mother. The family split up and he was raised by various aunts in Ireland before being sent away to a private school in England. In school he excelled at English, French and Latin but had to drop out due to family bankruptcy. He spent a year in poverty in London before moving to Cincinnati. After early struggles, he befriended a newspaper publisher, which led to a job as a crime reporter. His gruesome accounts of murders were popular with the readers. He always had literary aspirations and translated French romantic literature which was often not to the taste of puritanical readers. He moved to New Orleans, Martinique and then aged 40 to Japan where he spent the last fourteen years of his life. He married Koizumi Setsuko, who helped him translate Japanese fairy stories and legends, which he polished for western readers. He considered Eastern traditional values to be superior to those of the industrialised west. He died in Japan aged 54.
This biography was written by Paul Murray who was Irish ambassador to Japan. In recent years interest in Lafcadio Hearn's life and work has been rekindled in Ireland. A memorial Japanese garden has been created in Tramore, County Waterford where he lived for a while as a boy.
May 5, 2025
Any foreigner with literary inclinations who spends time in Japan may resent the suggestion that Lafcadio Hearn has said everything that Japanese people want to be told about their ancient culture, although if he did so it was in a late 19th century style that has been out of fashion for a hundred years and can be politicised in terms of the contrast between Hearn's cosmopolitan Irish/Greek/American background and more 'purely' Anglo-American writers. The strength of Murray's biography is that with almost half the pages devoted to Hearn's family and upbringing and life before his fateful arrival in Yokohama on 4th April, 1890, we see all the more clearly how those beautiful temple gardens and tales of the uncanny that aroused his imaginative powers offered a relief from the demons that had been haunting him since childhood, and that his journey could well have continued out of Japan had he lived longer. Murray includes an extraordinary photograph taken just a week before the writer's death that shows him in profile with his eyes slightly downcast amid a sea of earnest Japanese faces, who all look straight at the camera: not so much a fairies-in-the-garden cut and paste job but a disembodied head from one of his stories.
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