A reprint of the 1915 edition containing essays on Shakespeare, Poe, Longfellow, Shelley, Keats, English poetry, Baudelaire, the supernatural in fiction, poems about insects and other literary topics. These were lectures to his students while he held the chair of English literature in the University of Tokyo from 1896 to 1902. Selected and edited, with an introduction, by John Erskine, Associate Professor of English in Columbia University, New York.Lafcadio Hearn was one of the original American expatriates to move to Japan; after living in New Orleans for some years, writing stories, he moved on to Tokyo, where he married a Japanese woman and changed his name. Hearn is best known for his supernatural tales.