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 modern American nation. Volume 3,
Genre-Tales and the Alcohol Novels
, contains four examples of the lighter fiction he wrote to pay his bills in the Feminine Fifties, all lit up by humor and close observations of the genteel life of 1850’s New York. But two of the three serial novels presented here, unusual for their time, treat alcohol as a festive source of humor and interesting states of consciousness. The third novel,
The Household Angel
, was his masterpiece, a portrayal of alcoholism and its effects on family and society. It signaled the arrival of a major talent, who unfortunately died at age 34 before his full promise as a novelist could be fulfilled.