* Pierre Loti was the pseudonym of Julien Viaud (1850–1923), a French novelist and naval officer. Edmund Gosse said about his work in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911): ‘Many of his best books are long sobs of remorseful memory, so personal, so intimate, that an English reader is amazed to find such depth of feeling compatible with the power of minutely and publicly recording what is felt.’