John Luther Long

John Luther Long was a Philadelphia lawyer, and the author of the story behind Madama Butterfly. He was admitted to the bar in 1881. Several of his stories were set in Japan, which he never visited, their detail coming from his sister Jennie Correll, a missionary's wife there. Madame Butterfly appeared in The Century Magazine in 1898 and became Belasco's play two years later, and the two men wrote five more plays together, The Darling of the Gods among them. Puccini met Long in Philadelphia in 1907, but did not take up the subject Long suggested to him.