Volume 5 | Opium, the Arts, and America

Ludlow’s non-fiction essays, travelogues and criticism ranged as widely in subject matter as he did in his geographic travels to the southern and the western edges of the United States. His sketches of Florida provide a view of pre-Civil War slaves and slave-owners. His theatre and musical criticism highlighted early stars of the New York stage like Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes), and New York concert performances of Creole pianist and composer Louis Gottschalk. At the end of his career, he returned to subject of drugs in a very different vein as both a student and a sufferer of the opium habit.