Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) is best known for his novels Kokoro, I Am a Cat, Light and Dark, and Botchan. A renowned scholar of English literature who was among the first Japanese people sent to England to study during the Meiji Restoration, Sōseki was also a prolific essayist and poet in the haiku and kanshi traditions. Something of a late bloomer, he wrote the majority of his works in the last decade of his life, which was cut short by a stomach ulcer.