Inventing New Orleans

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) prowled the streets of New Orleans from 1877 to 1888 before moving on to a new life and global fame as a chronicler of Japan. Hearn''s influence on our perceptions of New Orleans, however, has unjustly remained unknown.

In ten years of serving as a correspondent and selling his writing in such periodicals as the New Orleans Daily Item, Times-Democrat, Harper''s Weekly, a...