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Robert Louis Stevenson

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Robert-Louis-Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson
13 November 1850
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died 3 December 1894 (aged 44)
Vailima, Samoa
Occupation Novelist, poet, travel writer
Nationality Scottish
Education 1857 Mr. Henderson's School, Edinburgh, 1857-1861, Private tutors, >1859 Return to Mr. Henderson's School, >1861 Edinburgh Academy
1863 Boarding school in Isleworth, Middlesex
1864 Robert Thomson's School, Edinburgh
1867 University of Edinburgh
Period Victorian era
Notable work(s) Treasure Island, A Child's Garden of Verses, Kidnapped,
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Spouse(s) Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne]]
Children Isobel Osbourne Strong (stepdaughter)
Lloyd Osbourne (stepson)
Relative(s) father: Thomas Stevenson
mother: Margaret Isabella Balfour

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894) was a Scottish poet, novelist, essayist, and travel writer.

Life[]

Overview[]

Stevenson was born at Edinburgh, the son of Thomas Stevenson, a distinguished civil engineer. His health was extremely delicate. He was destined for the engineering profession, in which his family had for 2 generations been eminent, but having neither inclination nor physical strength for it, he in 1871 exchanged it for law, and was called to the Bar in 1875, but never practised. From childhood his interests had been literary, and in 1871 he began to contribute to the Edinburgh University Magazine and the Portfolio. A tour in a canoe in 1876 led to the publication in 1878 of his 1st book, An Inland Voyage. In the same year, The New Arabian Nights, (afterwards separately published) appeared in magazines, and in 1879 he brought out Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. In that year he went to California and married Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe in 1880 he entered page 361upon a period of productiveness which, in view of his wretched health, was, both as regards quantity and worth, highly remarkable. The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edinburgh, and by the publication of Virginibus Puerisque. Other works followed in rapid succession. Though the originality and power of Stevenson's writings was recognised from the beginning by a select few, it was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide may be said to have turned with the publication of Treasure Island in 1882, which immediately gave him an assured place among the foremost imaginative writers of the day.[3]

Robert_Louis_Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

In 1887 he went to America, and in the following year visited the South Sea Islands where, in Samoa, he settled in 1890, and where he died and is buried. In 1889 The Master of Ballantrae appeared, in 1892 Across the Plains and The Wrecker, in 1893 Island Nights Entertainments and Catriona, and in 1894 The Ebb Tide in collaboration with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne. By this time his health was completely broken, but to the last he continued the struggle, and left the fragments St. Ives and Weir of Hermiston, the latter containing some of his best work. They were published in 1897. His greatest power is shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th century, such as Kidnapped, Catriona, and Weir of Hermiston, and in those, e.g., The Child's Garden of Verse, which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology of child-life; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a marvellously powerful and subtle psychological story, and some of his short tales also are masterpieces. Of these "Thrawn Janet" and "Will of the Mill" may be mentioned as examples in widely different kinds. His excursions into the drama in collaboration with W.E. Henley added nothing to his reputation. His style is singularly fascinating, graceful, various, subtle, and with a charm all its own.[3]

A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world.[4] His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov,[5] J. M. Barrie,[6] and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."[7]

Youth and education[]

Robert Louis Stevenson mit 7 Jahren

Stevenson at seven. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, the only child of Thomas Stevenson, civil engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella (Balfour), was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on 13 November 1850.[8]

His mother's father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton,[9] and Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. "Now I often wonder", wrote Stevenson, "what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them."[10]

Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, and often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851.[11] He suffered from infancy from great fragility of health, and nearly died in 1858 of gastric fever, which left much constitutional weakness behind it.[12]

From the age of 6 he showed a disposition to write.[12] He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father was proud of this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business."[13] He paid for the printing of Robert's earliest publication at 16, an account of the covenanters' rebellion which was published on its 200th anniversary, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 (1866).[14]

He went to school, mainly in Edinburgh, from 1858 to 1867, but his ill-health prevented his learning much, and his teachers, as his mother afterwards said, “liked talking to him better than teaching him.”[12] An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age 6, a problem repeated at age 11 when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at Colinton.[15] In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his earliest school, and he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, learning at age 7 or 8, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse.[16]

He often accompanied his father on his official visits to the lighthouses of the Scottish coast and on longer journeys, thus early accustoming himself to travel. As his health improved it was hoped that he would be able to adopt the family profession of civil engineering, and in 1868 he went to Anstruther and then to Wick as a pupil engineer. In 1871 he had so far advanced as to receive the silver medal of the Edinburgh Society of Arts for a paper suggesting improvements in lighthouse apparatus.[12]

But long before this he had started as an author. His earliest publication, the anonymous pamphlet of The Pentland Rising, had appeared in 1866, and The Charity Bazaar, a trifle in which his future manner is happily displayed, in 1868.[12]

From about the age of 18 he dropped his baptismal names of Lewis Balfour and called himself Robert Louis, but was mostly known to his relatives and intimate friends as “Louis.”

Although he greatly enjoyed the outdoor business of the engineer's life it strained his physical endurance too much, and in 1871 was reluctantly exchanged for study at the Edinburgh bar, to which he was called in 1875. In 1873 he met Sidney Colvin, who was to prove the closest of his friends and at last the loyal and admirable editor of his works and his correspondence; and to this time are attributed several of the most valuable friendships of Stevenson's life.[12]

Early career[]

240px-Robert Louis Stevenson Knox Series

Knox Series photo of Stevenson. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The personal appearance of Stevenson has often been described: he was tall, extremely thin, dark-haired, restless, compelling attention with the lustre of his wonderful brown eyes. In the existing portraits of him those who never saw him are apt to discover a strangeness which seems to them sinister or even affected. This is a consequence of the false stability of portraiture, since in life the unceasing movement of light in the eyes, the mobility of the mouth, and the sympathy and sweetness which radiated from all the features, precluded the faintest notion of want of sincerity.[17]

He was now working, with extreme assiduity, to ground himself in the forms and habits of literary style. In 1875 appeared, anonymously, his Appeal to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland, and in that year he made the earliest of many visits to the forest of Fontainebleau. Meanwhile at Mentone in the winter of 1873-1874 he had grown in mind under the shadow of extreme physical weakness, and in the following spring began to contribute essays of high originality to a few periodicals, of which the Cornhill, then edited by Sir Leslie Stephen, was initially the most important.[12]

Stevenson made no attempt to practice at the bar, and the next years were spent in wanderings in France, Germany and Scotland. Records of these journeys, and of the innocent adventures which they encouraged, were given to the world as An Inland Voyage in 1878, and as Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes in 1879. During these four years Stevenson's health, which was always bettered by life out of doors, gave him little trouble. It was now recognized that he was to be an author, and he contributed many essays, tales and fantasies to various journals and magazines.[12]

At Fontainebleau in 1876 Stevenson had met Fanny Osbourne, the lady who afterwards became his wife; she returned to her home in California in 1878, and in August of the following year, alarmed at news of her health, Stevenson hurriedly crossed the Atlantic. He travelled, from lack of means, as a steerage passenger and then as an emigrant, and in December, after hardships which seriously affected his health, he arrived in San Francisco.[12]

In May 1880 he married, and the couple moved to the desolate mining-camp which he has described in The Silverado Squatters. As Colvin has well said, these months in the west of America were spent “under a heavy combined strain of personal anxiety and literary effort.” Some of his most poignant and most enchanting letters were written during this romantic period of his life.[12]

In the autumn of 1880 he returned to Scotland, with his wife and stepson, who were received at once into the Edinburgh household of his parents. But the condition of his health continued to be very alarming, and they went almost immediately to Davos, where he remained until the spring of 1881. In this year was published Virginibus puerisque, the earliest collection of Stevenson's essays. He spent the summer months in Scotland, writing articles, poems, and above all his earliest romance, The Sea-Cook, afterwards known as Treasure Island; but he was driven back to Davos in October.[12]

In 1882 appeared Familiar Studies of Men and Books and New Arabian Nights. His 2 winters at Davos had done him some good, but his summers in Scotland invariably undid the benefit. He therefore determined to reside wholly in the south of Europe, and in the autumn of 1882 he settled near Marseilles. This did not suit him, but from March 1883 to July 1884 he was at home at a charming house called La Solitude, above Hyères; this was in many ways to be the happiest station in the painful and hurrying pilgrimage of Stevenson's life. The Silverado Squatters was published in 1883, and also the more important Treasure Island, which made Stevenson a popular writer.[12]

He planned a vast amount of work, but his schemes were all frustrated in January 1884 by the most serious illness from which he had yet suffered. He was just pulled through, but the attack was followed by long prostration and incapacity for work, and by continued relapses. In July he was brought back to England, and from this time until August 1887 Stevenson's home was at Bournemouth.[12]

In 1885 he published, after long indecision, his volume of poems, A Child's Garden of Verses, an inferior story, The Body Snatcher, and that admirable romance, Prince Otto, in which the peculiar quality of Stevenson's style was displayed at its highest. He also collaborated with W.E. Henley in some plays, Beau Austin, Admiral Guinea and Robert Macaire. Early in 1886 he struck the public taste with precision in his wild symbolic tale of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In the summer of the same year he published Kidnapped, which had been written at Bournemouth.[12]

This, however, was a period of great physical prostration, so that 1886 and 1887 were perforce among the least productive years of Stevenson's life. In the early months of 1887 Stevenson was particularly ill, and he was further prostrated by being summoned in May to the deathbed of his father, who had just returned to Edinburgh from the south. He printed privately as a pamphlet, in June 1887, a brief and touching sketch of his father. In July he published his volume of lyrical poems called Underwoods.[12]

In voluntary exile[]

The ties that bound him to England were now severed, and his health was broken to such a discouraging degree that he determined to remove to another hemisphere. Accordingly, having disposed of Skerryvore, his house at Bournemouth, he sailed from London, with his wife, mother and stepson, for New York on 17 August 1887. He never set foot in Europe again. His memoir of his friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin was published soon after his departure.[12]

After resting at Newport, he went for the winter to be under the care of a physician at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks for the winter. Here he was very quiet, and steadily active with his pen, writing both the greater part of the Master of Ballantrae and many of his finest later essays. He had undertaken, for a regular payment greatly in excess of anything which he had hitherto received, to contribute a monthly essay to Scribner's Magazine, and these essays, 12 in number, were published continuously throughout the year 1888. Early in that year was begun The Wrong Box, a farcical romance in which Mr Lloyd Osbourne participated; Stevenson also began a romance about the Indian Mutiny, which he abandoned. His attitude about this time to life and experience is reflected in Pulvis et umbra, one of the noblest of all his essays.[12]

In April 1888 he was at the coast of New Jersey for some weeks, and in June started for San Francisco, where he had ordered a schooner, the “Casco,” to be ready to receive him. On the 28th of the month, he started, as Mr Colvin has said, “on what was only intended to be a pleasure excursion . . . but turned into a voluntary exile prolonged until the hour of his death”: he never again left the waters of the Pacific.[12]

The “Casco” proceeded to the Marquesas, then south and east to Tahiti, passing before Christmas northwards to Honolulu, where Stevenson spent 6 months and finished The Master of Ballantrae and The Wrong Box. It was during this time that he paid his famous visit to the leper settlement at Molokai.[12]

In 1889, “on a certain bright June day,” the Stevensons sailed for the Gilbert Islands, and after six months' cruising found themselves at Samoa, where he landed for the first time about Christmas Day 1889.[12] On this occasion, however, though strongly drawn to the beautiful island, he stayed not longer than 6 weeks, and proceeded to Sydney, where, early in 1890, he published, in a blaze of righteous anger, his Father Damien: an Open Letter to the Rev. Dr Hyde of Honolulu, in vindication of the memory of Father Damien and his work among the lepers of the Pacific.[17]

At Sydney he was very ill again: it was now obvious that his only chance of health lay within the tropics. For nearly the whole of the year 1890 the Stevensons were cruising through unfamiliar archipelagos (on board a little trading steamer, the “Janet Nicholl.” Meanwhile his volume of Ballads was published in London.[17]

The last 4 years of his unquiet life were spent at Samoa, in circumstances of such health and vigour as he had never previously enjoyed, and in surroundings singularly picturesque. It was in November 1890 that he made his abode at Vailima, where he took a small barrack of a wooden box 500 ft. above the sea, and began to build himself a large house close by.[17]

The natives gave him the name of Tusitala. His character developed unanticipated strength on the practical side; he became a vigorous employer of labour, an active planter, above all a powerful and benignant island chieftain. He gathered by degrees around him “a kind of feudal clan of servants and retainers,” and he plunged, with more generous ardour than coolness of judgment, into the troubled politics of the country. He took up the cause of the deposed king Mataafa with extreme ardour, and he wrote a book, A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892), in the attempt to win over British sympathy to his native friends.[17]

In the autumn of 1892 he received a visit at Vailima from the countess of Jersey, in company with whom and some others he wrote the burlesque extravagance in prose and verse, called An Object of Pity, privately printed in 1893 at Sydney.[17]

Whenever the cultivation of his estate and the vigorous championship of his Samoan retainers gave him the leisure, Stevenson was during these years almost wholly occupied in writing romances of Scottish life. The Wrecker, an adventurous tale of American life, which mainly belonged to an earlier time, was written in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne and finally published in 1892; and towards the close of that very eventful and busy year he began The Justice Clerk, afterwards Weir of Hermiston. A portion of the old record of emigrant experiences in 1879, long suppressed for private reasons, also appeared in book form in 1892.[17]

In 1893 Stevenson published the important Scottish romance of Catriona, written as a sequel to Kidnapped, and the 3 tales illustrative of Pacific Ocean character, Island Nights' Entertainments. But in 1893 the uniform good fortune which had attended the Stevensons since their settlement in Samoa began to be disturbed. The whole family at Vailima became ill, and the final subjugation of his protege Mataafa, and the destruction of his party in Samoan politics, deeply distressed and discouraged Stevenson. In a series of letters to The Times he exposed the policy of the chief justice, Mr Cedercrantz, and the president, of the council, Baron Senfft. He so influenced public opinion that both were removed from office. In the autumn of that year he went for a change of scene to the Sandwich Islands, but was taken ill there, and was only too glad to return to Samoa.[17]

In 1894 he was greatly cheered by the plan, suggested by friends in England and carried out by them with the greatest energy, of the noble collection of his works in 28 volumes, since known as the Edinburgh editions. In September 1894 was published The Ebb Tide, the latest of his books which he saw through the press. Of Stevenson's daily avocations, and of the temper of his mind through these years of romantic exile, a clear idea may be obtained by the posthumous Vailima Letters, edited by Mr Sidney Colvin in 1895. Through 1894 he was engaged in composing 2 romances, neither of which he lived to complete.[17]

He was dictating Weir of Hermiston, apparently in his usual health, on the day he died. This was the 3rd of December 1894; he was gaily talking on the verandah of his house at Vailima when he had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he never recovered consciousness, and passed away painlessly in the course of the evening. His body was carried next day by 60 sturdy Samoans, who acknowledged Stevenson as their chief, to the summit of the precipitous peak of Vaea, where he had wished to be buried, and where they left him to rest for ever with the Pacific Ocean at his feet.[17]

Writing[]

Stevenson's other works include: Memories and Portraits (1887); The Merry Men, and other Tales and Fables (1887); The Black Arrow (1888); Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1889); Across the Plains, with other Memories and Essays (1892), and the posthumous works, Songs of Travel, and other Verses (1896), St Ives (1899), completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch A Stevenson Medley (1899); In the South Seas: experiences . . . on the “Casco” (1888) and the Equator (1889) (1900).[18]

The charm of the personal character of Stevenson and the romantic vicissitudes of his life are so predominant in the minds of all who knew him, or lived within earshot of his legend, that they made the ultimate position which he will take in the history of English literature somewhat difficult to decide. That he was the most attractive figure of a man of letters in his generation is admitted; and the acknowledged fascination of his character was deepened, and was extended over an extremely wide circle of readers, by the publication in 1899 of his Letters, which have subdued even those who were rebellious to the entertainment of his books.[17]

It is therefore from the point of view of its “charm” that the genius of Stevenson must be approached, and in this respect there was between himself and his books, his manners and his style, his practice and his theory, a very unusual harmony. Very few authors of so high a class have been so consistent, or have made their conduct so close a reflection of their philosophy. This unity of the man in his work makes it difficult, for one who knew him, to be sure that one rightly gauges the purely literary significance of the latter. It may be said that the mingling of distinct and original vision with a singularly conscientious handling of the English language, in the sincere and wholesome self-consciousness of the strenuous artist, seems to be the central feature of Stevenson as a writer by profession.[17]

He was always assiduously graceful, always desiring to present his idea, his image, his rhapsody, in as persuasive a light as possible, and, particularly, with as much harmony as possible. He had mastered his manner and, as one may say, learned his trade, in the exercise of criticism and the reflective parts of literature, before he surrendered himself to that powerful creative impulse which had long been tempting him, so that when, in mature life, he essayed the portraiture of invented character he came to it unhampered by any imperfection of language. This distinguished mastery of style, and love of it for its own sake within the bounds of good sense and literary decorum, gave him a pre-eminence among the story-tellers of his time.[17]

No doubt it is still by his romances that Stevenson keeps the wider circle of his readers. But many hold that his letters and essays are finer contributions to pure literature, and that on these exquisite mixtures of wisdom, pathos, melody and humour his fame is likely to be ultimately based.[17]

In verse he had a touch far less sure than in prose. Here we find less evidence of sedulous workmanship, yet not infrequently a piercing sweetness, a depth of emotion, a sincere and spontaneous lovableness, which are irresistibly touching and inspiring.[17]

Whatever may be the ultimate order of reputation among his various books, or whatever posterity may ultimately see fit to ordain as regards the popularity of any of them, it is difficult to believe that the time will ever come in which Stevenson will not be remembered as the most beloved of the writers of that age which he did so much to cheer and stimulate by his example.[17]

A complete edition of Stevenson's works was issued at Edinburgh in 1894-1898. A Bibliography of the works of R.L. Stevenson by Colonel W.F. Prideaux appeared in 1903.[18]

Critical introduction[]

by Sidney Calvin

"Poetry," wrote Walter Savage Landor, “was always my amusement, prose my study and business.” Much the same thing might truly have been said of that very different personage, Robert Louis Stevenson. He once wrote of himself that he was “a poetical character with a prose talent.” There was no time in his literary life when the chief part of his industry and effort was not given to prose: there was no time when he was not also accustomed occasionally to write verse. And though it was the preponderance and excellence of his work in prose that chiefly won and holds for him his place in literature, yet the charm and power of his spirit are to be felt scarcely less in the relatively small and unassuming body of his poetry.

He wrote in verse generally when he was too tired to write in prose, and almost always from one of two impulses: either to give direct expression to personal moods and affections or else to exercise himself in the technical practice of this or that poetic form. The two impulses sometimes, of course, worked together to a single result: but as a rule the stronger the pressure of the immediate feeling that moved him, the simpler, more traditional and ready to hand was the form he chose for expressing it. Although an acute and interested student of poetic forms and measures, he was, with one or two exceptions presently to be noted, no great metrical innovator on his own account. Neither did he consider that he had a right to be regarded as a lyrical or “singing” poet at all. In a letter written to John Addington Symonds not long after the publication of his volume Underwoods, he defined with his usual modesty his own view of his poetical status and affinities: “I wonder if you saw my book of verses? It went into a second edition, because of my name, I suppose, and its prose merits. I do not set up to be a poet. Only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one who sings. But I believe the very fact that it was only speech served the book with the public. Horace is much a speaker, and see how popular! most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot conceive a person who does not love his Martial; most of Burns also. Excuse this little apology for my house; but I don’t like to come before people who have a note of song, and let it be supposed I do not know the difference.”

A man writes verses at 18 if ever, and at that age Stevenson records that he was busy with a tragedy of Semiramis in imitation of Webster and a series of sentimental outpourings of his own which he called Voces Fidelium. Neither of these ever saw the light. When he first came in touch with literary circles five years later, his mind seemed concentrated on the single endeavour of achieving a prose style that should match and truly express the vividness of his perceptions and imaginings, and poetry seemed hardly to be in his thoughts at all. But I believe he was already beginning to try his hand at some of those pieces in the Lothian vernacular which were afterwards published in Underwoods. as well as at confessions and meditations in various modes of English verse.

A couple of years later again, when Stevenson began to frequent the Fontainebleau region, we find him for a while much taken up with the study of Charles d’Orléans and with the attempt, then in fashion among his friends, to imitate in English the Old French forms of ballade, rondeau, triolet, &c. His letters at this time were apt to contain experiments of this kind, sometimes, like his translation of Nous n’irons plus au bois, as happy in execution as deep and sincere in feeling. While he was absent, to the anxious concern of his friends, on his marriage expedition to California in 1879, and suffering with high courage much illness and privation, he sometimes cast into unstudied but deeply felt verse the emotions of the time: to this period belong the lines beginning "Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert," as well as the famous "Requiem", perhaps his best known utterance in verse.

During the six invalid years on the Continent or in England that followed, the tale of such occasional poems, composed in self-confession or as addresses to friends, continued to grow, but he showed no signs of intending to publish them. Occasionally there came a metrical experiment, like the set of alcaics addressed to Mr. Horatio Brown at Davos and beginning “Brave lads in olden musical centuries,” perhaps the second-best achievement of this pattern in our literature after Tennyson’s ode to Milton. Once at the same place the tragic death of a friend’s son drew from him those consolatory stanzas In Memoriam F. A. S., which have since comforted so many stricken hearts and of which the rhythm and cadence are at once so personal and so moving. But as a rule he preferred to employ the most familiar vehicles, especially the four-stressed couplet or blank verse,— a blank verse of no very studied or complicated structure, perhaps more resembling that of Landor in his occasional and complimentary pieces than any other model.

It was during Stevenson’s stay at Hyères in 1883–4 that his friends became aware of a new departure he was beginning to make in verse. He took to sending home, first in batches and then in sheaves, sets of nursery verses reviving, with a fidelity and freshness unparalleled, the feelings and fancies, the doings and beings, of an imaginative child; the child being of course truly himself. “Penny Whistles” was his name for them: and after returning to England and settling at Bournemouth in 1884 he gathered them into a volume under the new title A Child’s Garden of Verses. This was his first published book of verse.... Having once thus come before the public as a writer of verse, he next gathered together what he thought the pick of his occasional and experimental efforts both in English and in Scots, and published them in a volume of which he borrowed the title, Underwoods, from Ben Jonson. In the English portion of the book many of his private affections and experiences, and some of his thoughts and observations as a traveller, are recorded in no such strain of brilliant and high-wrought craftsmanship as he maintains in his prose, but for the most part in modes which attract and satisfy by a certain quiet, companionable grace and unobtrusive distinction of their own. The attempt to revive the measures and the dialect of Burns, and yet not to be a slavish imitator of his spirit, has been a stumbling-block to almost all who have ventured on it; but here, too, Stevenson’s personality has strength enough to assert itself through a wide range of mood, from the satire, smiling but not without its sting, of "A Lowden Sabbath Morn" to the heartfelt recollections of "Ille Terrarum".

When in 1887 Stevenson left England again, and as it turned out for good and all, he carried with him both the habit of throwing his immediate personal emotions into simple and heartfelt occasional verse and that of trying his hand deliberately at new styles and measures. This time his new technical experiments were in the ballad form. The first, "Ticonderoga", a tale of Highland second-sight during the American War of Independence, was written at the Adirondacks at the beginning of winter, 1887. During the 18 months of seafaring in the Pacific archipelagos which followed, he took an intense interest in the native island populations and their traditions, partly because of resemblances he found between them and those of the Scottish Highlands, and wrote two long and vigorous ballads in a swinging 6-beat and triple-time measure on subjects of island history, "Rahero" and "The Feast of Famine." It is no doubt due to the remoteness of the scenes, names, and manners, as well as to the fact that prose narrative, not verse, was what his public were used to expect from him, that these ballads have had less success than almost any of his writings. When in 1890 they were reprinted in a volume, he included with them 2 others more familiar in theme, the Galloway story of "Heather Ale," and the English tale, told with fine spirit in the 1st person, "Christmas at Sea."

Meanwhile the growth of Stevenson’s mind and deepening of his character, together with his sense of exile — voluntary, but exile none the less — from old scenes and friendships, seemed to give every year a richer and fuller note to the occasional meditations or addresses to his friends in verse which he continued to send home. The more remote and solitary the island haunt from whence he wrote, the more poignant seemed his recollections of Scotland or of London; and once at any rate, in the verses "To S.R. Crockett" ... he showed a touch of something like metrical genius in his manner of taking over a phrase from a prose dedication and turning it into verse of a new and very moving rhythm. After his sudden death at Vailima in December, 1894, a volume, partly prepared by himself, of these later occasional verses, together with some of earlier date that had not previously been collected, was published under the title Songs of Travel.[19]

Critical reputation[]

Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, but with the rise of modern literature after World War I, he was seen for much of the 20th century as a writer of the second class, relegated to children's literature and the horror genre. Condemned by authors such as Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, he was gradually excluded from the literary canon taught in schools. His exclusion reached a height in 1973 when, in the 2,000-page Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Stevenson was entirely unmentioned.

The late 20th century saw the start of a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial history of the South Pacific, and a humanist. He is now being re-evaluated as a peer with authors such as Joseph Conrad (who Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction) and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organizations devoted to his work.[20]

No matter what the scholarly reception, Stevenson remains very popular. According to the Index Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 25th most translated author in the world, ahead of Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Recognition[]

3 of his poems ("Romance," "In the Highlands," and "Requiem") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.[21]

A bronze relief memorial to Stevenson, designed by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904, is mounted in the Moray Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.[22] Another memorial in Edinburgh stands in West Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle; it is a simple upright stone inscribed with "RLS - A Man of Letters 1850 -1894" by sculptor Iain Hamilton Finlay in 1987.[23]

A plaque above the door of a house in Castleton of Braemar asserts 'Here R.L. Stevenson spent the Summer of 1881 and wrote Treasure Island, his first great work'.

Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California was established in 1952 and still exists as a college preparatory boarding school.

A garden was designed by the Bournemouth Corporation in 1957 as a memorial to Stevenson, on the site of his Westbourne house "Skerryvore" which he occupied from 1885 to 1887. A statue of the Skerryvore lighthouse is present on the site.

The Writers' Museum off Edinburgh's Royal Mile devotes a room to Stevenson, containing some of his personal possessions from childhood through to adulthood.

In 1994, to mark the 100th Anniversary of Stevenson's death, the Royal Bank of Scotland issued a series of commemorative £1 notes which featured a quill pen and Stevenson's signature on the obverse, and Stevenson's face on the reverse side. Alongside Stevenson's portrait are scenes from some of his books and his house in Western Samoa.[24] Two million notes were issued, each with a serial number beginning "RLS". The first note to be printed was sent to Samoa in time for their centenary celebrations on 3 December 1994.[25]

In 2013, a statue of Robert Louis Stevenson with his dog as a child was unveiled by author Ian Rankin outside Colinton Parish Church in Scotland.[26] The sculptor of the statue was Alan Herriot and the money to erect it was raised by the Colinton Community Conservation Trust.[26]

There is an R.L. Stevenson Elementary School in Burbank, California, whose mascot is the Pirates. [27][28]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

Novels[]

Short fiction[]

Non-fiction[]

Travel[]

Juvenile[]

Collected editions[]

  • The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson. New York: Scribner, 1891. 
  • The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Edinburgh: Printed by T. & A. Constable for Longmans Green & Chatto & Windus.
  • The Stevenson Reader; Selected passages from the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Chatto & Windus, 1898.
  • A Stevenson Medley (edited by Sidney Colvin). London: Chatto & Windus, 1899.

Letters[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[29]

See also[]

Robert_Louis_Stevenson_poem_-_From_a_Railway_Carriage

Robert Louis Stevenson poem - From a Railway Carriage

Songs_from_the_poetry_of_Robert_Louis_Stevenson_-_Block_City

Songs from the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson - Block City

References[]

  • Bowman, James Cloyd. An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. 1918.
  •  Gosse (1911). "Stevenson, Robert Louis". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 207-210. . Wikisource, Web, Jun. 27, 2022.
  • Harman, Claire. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-711321-8
  • O'Brien, Robert. This is San Francisco. Chronicle Books, 1994.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Menikoff, Barry. The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson; Introduction. Modern Library, 2002, p. xx
  2. ↑ Menikoff, Barry. The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson; Introduction. Modern Library, 2002, p. xvii
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 John William Cousin, "Stevenson, Robert Louis," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 360-361. Wikisource, Web, Mar. 5, 2018.
  4. ↑ See the Index Translationum.
  5. ↑ Dillard, R. H. W. (1998). Introduction to Treasure Island. New York: Signet Classics. xiii. ISBN 0-451-52704-6. http://books.google.com/?id=3f2ne_bk-xoC&pg=PR13. 
  6. ↑ Chaney, Lisa (2006). Hide-and-seek with Angels: The Life of J. M. Barrie. London: Arrow Books. ISBN 0-09-945323-1. 
  7. ↑ Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1913). The Victorian Age in Literature. London: Henry Holt and Co.. p. 246. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Age_in_Literature/Chapter_IV. 
  8. ↑ Gosse, 907.
  9. ↑ Balfour (1901), 10–12; Furnas (1952), 24; Mehew (2004)
  10. ↑ Memories and Portraits (1887), Chapter VII. The Manse
  11. ↑ "A Robert Louis Stevenson Timeline (born Nov. 13th 1850 in Edinburgh, died Dec. 3rd 1894 in Samoa)". Robert-louis-stevenson.org. http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/timeline. Retrieved 2012-05-14. 
  12. ↑ 12.00 12.01 12.02 12.03 12.04 12.05 12.06 12.07 12.08 12.09 12.10 12.11 12.12 12.13 12.14 12.15 12.16 12.17 12.18 12.19 Gosse, 908.
  13. ↑ Paxton (2004).
  14. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 67; Furnas (1952), pp. 43–5
  15. ↑ Furnas (1952), 34–6; Mehew (2004). Alison Cunningham's recollection of Stevenson balances the picture of an oversensitive child, "like other bairns, whiles very naughty": Furnas (1952), 30
  16. ↑ Mehew (2004)
  17. ↑ 17.00 17.01 17.02 17.03 17.04 17.05 17.06 17.07 17.08 17.09 17.10 17.11 17.12 17.13 17.14 17.15 Gosse, 909.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Gosse, 910.
  19. ↑ from Sidney Calvin, "Critical Introduction: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Mar. 28, 2016.
  20. ↑ Stephen Arata, "Robert Louis Stevenson" in David Scott Kastan, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, Vol. 5: 99-102.
  21. ↑ Alphabetical list of authors: Shelley, Percy Bysshe to Yeats, William Butler. Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 19, 2012.
  22. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial". St Giles' Cathedral. http://www.stgilescathedral.org.uk/history/architecture/rlsmemorial.html. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 
  23. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Grove". City of Edinburgh Council. http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory_record/139197/robert_louis_stevenson_memorial_grove. Retrieved 2013-10-27. 
  24. ↑ "Royal Bank Commemorative Notes". Rampant Scotland. http://www.rampantscotland.com/SCM/royalcomm.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-14. 
  25. ↑ "Our Banknotes: Commemorative Banknote". The Royal Bank of Scotland. Archived from the original on 2007-10-15. http://web.archive.org/web/20071015003123/http://www.rbs.com/about03.asp?id=ABOUT_US/OUR_HERITAGE/OUR_HISTORY/OUR_BANKNOTES/COMMEMORATIVE_BANKNOTES. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 (27 October 2013) Robert Louis Stevenson statue unveiled by Ian Rankin BBC News Scotland, Retrieved 27 October 2013
  27. ↑ http://www.burbankusd.org/District/Department/29-R-L-Stevenson-Elementary
  28. ↑ http://www.burbankusd.org/rlse
  29. ↑ Search results = au:Robert Louis Stevenson, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Nov. 23, 2013.

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