Search >> Oscanyan, Christopher Bey ( Hatchik ) (1818-)

Lecturer, Politician, Travel Writer, Translator, Novelist, Journalist, Editor, Playwright.

Hatchik Oscanyan was born in Constantinople, Turkey. He later changed his name to Christopher. He was educated at New York University and later served as Turkish consul-general in New York City from 1868 to 1874 ("Sultan" 257). A. L. Rawson refers to him as Oscanyan Bey, "Bey" being a Turkish title of respect, and describes him as a friend of Ada Clare. His association with Clare does not place him at Pfaff’s, but it does indicate that he was part of the Bohemian crowd that routinely gathered at Clare’s 42nd Street home.

A Harper’s New Monthly Magazine review of Oscanyan’s The Sultan and His People (1857) declares that “[h]is work is devoted to sketches of the present condition, national customs, and peculiar institutions of the Turkish people” (120). A review in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine asserts that Oscanyan’s “book is strikingly illustrated by a native artist, and the comparisons drawn in the cuts between the eastern and western models, are humorous and interesting. On the whole, there are few better accounts of the detail of Turkish life than this of Oscanyan’s and he describes with a constant and natural tendency to sympathy with his own people” (550).

[view works by this person]

References & Biographical Resources

Gay, Getty. "The Royal Bohemian Supper." New York Saturday Press. 31 Dec. 1859: 2. [more about this work]

Referred to as Clare's "royal Captive, the Grand Seignor of Turkey."

"Literary Intelligence." Saturday Press. 13 Nov. 1858: 2. [more about this work]

A note announces that Mr. Co Oscanyan will be lecturing on the "Social and Political Affairs of Turkey" (2). [pages: 2]

"Literary Notices." Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Jun. 1857: 119-121. [more about this work]

[pages: 120]

"Oscanyan's Sultan and his People." Putnam's Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art. May 1857: 550. [more about this work]

Rawson, A. L. "A Bygone Bohemia." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. 1896. 96-107. [more about this work]

A member of Clare's coterie of Bohemians. He is identified as a "once Turkish consul general" (103). [pages: 103]

"The Sultan and his People." The North American Review. Jul. 1857: 257-58. [more about this work]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume IV, Lodge-Pickens. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

[pages: 598-599]