Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson, Ernest Mehew (Editor)

Millions of readers throughout the world continue to enjoy Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child’s Garden of Verses, and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). A celebrated author in many different fields of literature, Stevenson is also recognized as a highly engaging and prolific he penned over 2,800 letters, which are contained in eight critically acclaimed volumes published by Yale University Press. In this book, 317 of Stevenson’s most interesting and revealing letters represent each stage of his mature life. With a linking narrative and full annotation, Ernest Mehew sets the letters in the context of Stevenson’s remarkable life.

Beginning with the days of his troubled youth in Edinburgh, Stevenson’s letters go on to tell of his love for Frances Sitwell, a beautiful, older married woman; a reckless journey to California in pursuit of Fanny Osbourne, the woman who became his wife; their worldwide but vain search for a healthy place to live; and a period of adventure in the South Seas, where Stevenson wrote some of his best work and became passionately involved in Samoan life. The letters show the author’s zest for living despite daunting illnesses, his struggles with his own writing, his literary tastes, and his affection for his friends. Stevenson writes in many moods, ranging from playful and witty to deeply serious. Better than any biography ever could, these letters in Stevenson’s own words tell the real story of his life.

Genres: Literature, Biography

640 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1970

About the author

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.

Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.

Reviews

[Joe Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

i actually haven't read them all but i love RLS. some really good insights into his works as well as his peculiar brain. the way he argues with everyone is really funny especially the time he calls a guy unemployed. i do wish there was more context as to what he's responding to sometimes because the little footnotes do not give me enough clues as to why the hell he's mad this time. it's funny though. like a weird puzzle. i think he has a lot wrong with him /aff

[K]

Found at the Catamount homestead.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Louis Stevenson was a persistently sickly and convalescent individual who famously died young at age 44, but in his reading his letters one is struck by the fact that he simply could not stay in one place for long. He was constantly on the move at a time when travel was far more arduous than it is today. Some of that travel was to generate material for books, but a lot of it was intended for recuperation (spa towns, places with better weather, and so on).

It is hardly a deep insight to suggest that his chances of improving health would have been far better if he had just stayed somewhere, anywhere, instead of frenziedly pursuing well-being like a chimera. Yet this elementary point seems to have been ignored / resisted by both RLS and the people around him. Stevenson was obviously intelligent, a great writer, and heroic in his summoning of what little energy he had; but the need for novelty functioned in him self-destructively, like a substance abuse problem. One waits in the letters for a glimmer of realization: “Maybe I should just calm down.” It doesn’t come.

[Graychin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m still working my way through this fat little volume, but I love it. It’s not something to rush through, but to dip into five or ten pages at a time. You’ll need to like RLS, I admit, but he’s easy to like. The prose is full of happy surprises. The anecdotes and observations rarely disappoint. These letters are necessarily less polished than, say, Stevenson’s essays or novels, but they’re full of pleasure, of character, and (surprising perhaps for someone ill most all the time) of a giddy joy in life.

[Astralabe]

One of the best letter writers in history, and also one of the most under-appreciated authors. His letters show that he was almost never free of the agonies of ill health, sometimes prostrated for days, and on many, many occasions was close to death. He maintained a cheery resignation to his condition, and like Dickens, wrote until a few hours before his death.

[Michael Hinsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

So sweet, style and a certain echo.. He said ,toward the end of his life."I'm read by journalist and boys..." "Treasure Island" alone was worth a life. I'll read "Kidnapped", and perhaps 'Jekyl..', (shudder). A dear writer 'for all that'.