Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836-1870) 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. 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...