Henri de La Chaume

Henri de La Chaume was a French writer best known for Terre-Neuve et les Terre-Neuviennes, a travel memoir about Newfoundland. Sources available here also link him to the English-language edition Hammered by the Waves: A Young Frenchman's Sojourn in Newfoundland in 1882-83, which presents his account to modern readers.

From the material attached to that work, he was about twenty years old when he visited Newfoundland, and his book grew out of that early experience. The result is part travel writing and part social portrait, with attention to geography, weather, local customs, religion, and everyday life in St. John’s and beyond.

Public records found during this search identify him as Henri Chanard de La Chaume, born in 1861 and died in 1949. I couldn’t confirm many more biographical details from strong author-focused sources, but his surviving work clearly stands out as an energetic and observant record of nineteenth-century Newfoundland.