Collected Works of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Volume 4: The Complete Short Stories

by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Stephen Crimi (Editor), Donald P. Dulchinos (Editor)

Overview

Fitz Hugh Ludlow's short stories are collected here for the first time. He burst on the literary scene in 1857 with the unlikely best seller The Hasheesh Eater. Written when he was just 20 years old, the book swept him into a career as a prolific novelist, short story author, arts critic, travel writer, journalist and editor. His friends and colleagues ranged from Walt Whitman to Brigham Young to Mark Twain. The material published in Ludlow’s Collected Works displays a depth of observation, a breadth of erudition and an appetite for extreme experience applied to the emerging modern American nation. The Heart of the Continent, published in 1870, bookended his brief but prolific 13-year career.

Though famous for his non-fiction explorations, Ludlow’s bread and butter as a full-time professional writer was the short story. As this volume testifies, he was prolific in his short, fourteen-year career and covered a wide range. His humorous light fiction was set in the daily life of New York City’s upper middle class. He produced several Poe-influenced tales of the weird. And he was most successful when basing stories on emotional incidents from his own life, including tales satirizing religious squabbles (informed by his upbringing by a born-again, Abolitionist preacher), tales of love lost from among his own family’s disappointments, and stories turning on his experiences on the Overland Stage to California in 1863.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996639460
Publisher:	Logosophia, LLC
Publication date:	10/01/2017
Pages:	916
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.19(d)

About the Author

Fitz Hugh Ludlow burst on the literary scene in 1857 with the unlikely best seller The Hasheesh Eater. Written when he was just 20 years old, the book swept him into a career as a full-time New York City writer and Bohemian. He became a prolific novelist, short story author, arts critic, travel writer, journalist and editor. His friends and colleagues ranged from Walt Whitman to Brigham Young to Mark Twain. The material published in Ludlow's Collected Works displays a depth of observation, a breadth of erudition and an appetite for extreme experience applied to the emerging modern American nation. The Hasheesh Eater was the first discussion of drug effects to appear outside the context of addiction and moral failing. It contains eloquent meditations and insights yielded by the drug in fields ranging from music, religion and philosophy, fields where Ludlow was significantly well-read even at such a young age. The book's appeal is quite modern, and latter day personalities ranging from H.P. Lovecraft to Timothy Leary to Terrance McKenna have praised the book. This Logosophia edition is re-edited and reformatted from the original, with a new introduction by Donald P. Dulchinos, author of the highly-acclaimed biography of Ludlow, Pioneer of Inner Space.

Donald P. Dulchinos is the author of Pioneer of Inner Space: The Life of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Forbidden Sacraments: The Survival of Shamanism in Western Civilization, and Neurosphere: The Convergence of Evolution, Group Mind, and the Internet. He has found time between these projects for a career in the information and telecommunications technology industry.

Stephen Crimi is the author of Katabatic Wind: Good Craic Fueled by Fumes from the Abyss; the editor of two collections of talks by biodynamic pioneer Alan Chadwick, Performance in the Garden, and Reverence, Obedience and the Invisible in the Garden; and the publisher of Logosophia Books.

Table of Contents

introduction by donald p. dulchinos ............................ v 1. the new soul of john markham ...................................... 1

harper’s weekly, december 5, 1857

1. the rector’s cross ........................................................... 11

   harper’s weekly, january 9, 1858

2. little good-for-nothing............................................... 23

   harper’s weekly, august 7, 1858

3. our queer papa: a case of organic affection .............. 47

   harper’s monthly, november, 1858

4. the loan of a lyre ........................................................... 71

   harper’s monthly, november, 1858

5. the phial of dread: by an analytic chemist............... 95

   harper’s monthly, november 1859

6. regular habits............................................................... 119

   harper’s monthly, december, 1859

7. the ransom of a heritage ............................................ 163

   waterville times, february-march, 1859

8. the century plant ........................................................ 191

   harper’s monthly, june, 1860

9. the cruise of the two deacons ................................... 247

   harper’s monthly, july-september, 1860

10. my velvet shoes ............................................................. 313

    harper’s monthly, november, 1860

11. the taxidermist............................................................. 345

    the knickerbocker, january, 1861

12. thrown together ......................................................... 377 harper’s monthly, june, 1861

13. the music essence .......................................................... 413 new york commercial advertiser, december 31, 1861

14. a drawn game ................................................................. 445 harper’s monthly, february, 1862

15. a strange acquaintance of mine................................. 479 new york leader, march, 1862

16. the battle and triumph of dr. susan ........................ 507 harper’s monthly, july-august, 1863

17. john heathburn’s title................................................. 569 harper’s monthly, february-march, 1864

18. an international affair .............................................. 645 harper’s monthly, january-february, 1866

19. thegrayjockey:arockymountaincamp-firestory...707 harper’s monthly, march, 1866

20. a result of “the lambeth casual” .............................. 747 harper’s monthly, september, 1866

21. a reformed ring-man.................................................... 781 harper’s monthly, august, 1867

22. pairingoff......................................................................797 harper’s monthly, september, 1867

23. uncle george .................................................................. 839 harper’s monthly, may, 1868

24. draw your conclusions ................................................. 865 harper’s monthly, august, 1869

25. the garret...................................................................... 897 fragment from a manuscript book, november 18, 1869

Editorial Reviews

The publication of the complete works of Fitz Hugh Ludlow marks a major event in American letters. Dulchinos and Crimi have rescued a forgotten and uniquely contemporary literary master whose celebration of hallucinated literary visions recall such Beat writers as William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. His later accounts of the horrors of addiction and the battle to get free could just as well have come from Augustin Burroughs and Jerry Stahl. Ludlow is a new nineteenth century giant to take his place alongside Hawthorne, Twain, Poe and Melville.

Alan Kaufman, author of Drunken Angel, co-editor (with Barney Rosset) of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature

Fitz Hugh Ludlow was a remarkable and woefully under-appreciated 19th century American—a New York man of letters, a Western traveler, a progressive, a bohemian, an advocate for opium addicts and an addict himself. His breakthrough hashish memoirs are an easy Yankee match to De Quincey, but he also produced glorious nature and travel writing, as well as curious science essays and some stories marked with the weird and wonderful. Logosophia has done a great service to American literature by ushering Ludlow back in print and, hopefully, back into the limelight.

Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica and host of the Expanding Mind podcast

From the Publisher