author
Fitz Hugh Ludlow
1836–1870
Best known for the strange, vivid memoir The Hasheesh Eater, this 19th-century American writer turned personal experience and restless travel into unusually modern prose. His work mixes curiosity, intensity, and a sharp eye for the mind under pressure.
1 Audiobook
A Brace Of Boys 1867, From "Little Brother"
by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
About the author
Born in New York City on September 11, 1836, Fitz Hugh Ludlow was an American author, journalist, and explorer. He is remembered chiefly for The Hasheesh Eater (1857), an autobiographical book that drew on his experiments with cannabis preparations and helped make him a distinctive, controversial literary voice.
Ludlow graduated from Union College and went on to write journalism as well as travel pieces about the American West. Those experiences later fed into The Heart of the Continent, a book shaped by his journeys to places including California and Yosemite.
His life was brief—he died on September 12, 1870—but his writing has lasted because it is both intensely personal and unusually observant. Readers often come to him for literary curiosity and stay for the energy, oddity, and honesty of his voice.