Archiv der Kategorie: Classics of Fiction (English)

Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

In writing this, his third, book for boys, Stevenson turned from scenes and characters of pure invention to real people and places of a minor incident of Scottish history. The Appin murder, which provides the turning point of the story, has thereby become known to thousands who had not before heard of Alan Breck or the wrongly condemned James Stewart. The Highlands, in their unsettled state after the ’45, are made the setting for the adventures of the sober David Balfour, in whose prim ways and staid talk Stevenson found the contrast with the rebel spirits of the Highland Jacobites. Save for the change of year from 1752 to 175 1, he keeps very close … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Island Nights’ Entertainments – Robert Louis Stevenson

The title of the volume which includes The Beach of Falesa, The Bottle Imp, and The Isle of Voices. The ‘Beach’ turns on the native dread of the spirit-devils in the woods, interwoven with which is the island life of natives and whites viewed through the eyes of a commonplace trade. It is a picture of the South Seas, very different from the idylls of Hermann Melville. In ‘The Bottle Imp’, the protagonist buys a bottle with an imp inside that grants wishes. However, the bottle is cursed; if the holder dies bearing it, their soul is forfeit to hell. ‘The Isle of Voices’ is a fairytale of magic treasure.

Island Nights’ Entertainments

An Inland Voyage – Robert Louis Stevenson

The “Inland Voyage” was as uneventful and prosaic a journey as could be made by a canoeist along the course of a sluggish canal and an insignificant river, yet the historian has invested every incident in his record with the deepest interest. It is a rare illustration of the fact that the traveller sees what he carries, with him the faculty for seeing. Mr. Stevenson has the penetrating and subtle insight of the philosopher, which discovers subjects for edifying reflection in the lightest affairs coming under his notice. With this keen and thoughtful power of observation, he has a talent for expression no less original and striking. Such as these are the pearls … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa – Robert Louis Stevenson

A great part of the last four years of Stevenson’s life was occupied, very unfortunately for his literary work, in an active share in Samoan politics. For some years before he began to travel in the Pacific, the islands in which he at last made his home, had been in a disturbed condition from causes partly arising from native differences, and partly from foreign interference. Before ever he had reached Samoa he had espoused the cause of the native race of Honolulu, and in February 1889 had written to ‘The Times’ crying against German aggressiveness in Samoa, displayed not only in relations with the natives, but … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Familiar Studies of Men and Books – Robert Louis Stevenson

Of the nine essays collected in this volume, seven had appeared in the ‘Cornhill Magazine.’ The whole set range in date from 1874 to 1881, and thus belong to the period of Stevenson’s life during which the papers in Virginibus Puerisque were written. The ‘ familiar studies ‘ are Victor Hugo’s Romances, Some Aspects Of Robert Burns, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Yoshido Torajiro, François Villon, Charles of Orleans, Samuel Pepys, and John Knox and Women. In arranging them for republication R. L. S. prefaced them by some notes of self-criticism, in which he is at much pains to show where, as he thought, he had accorded less than full … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Fables – Robert Louis Stevenson

In this volume of Stevenson constantly deals with this elusive but mysterious element in human thought; but he holds it in close contact with the soundest kind of good sense. The little imaginary dialogue or story may carry us entirely out of the real world, but is certain in the end to leave us face to face with some fundamental truth of life or with some frequent comment on men or affairs. The book is small and the fables are but a fragment of the work as originally designed, but nothing could be more characteristic of the man.

Fables

Format: Paperback.

Fables.

ISBN: 9783849676292.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Biography of Robert Louis … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Ebb-Tide – Robert Louis Stevenson

In 1890, the year after first reaching Samoa but before he had properly settled there, Stevenson and his stepson planned and began what they intended to be a huge novel, a black, ugly, trampling, violent story, full of strange scenes and striking characters. It took them until 1893 to finish the story. It seems to be that Stevenson realized he had taken his spade too deep in the black depths of human nature. His metier had mostly been the dark primitive passions of the race, but not even the conception of pure evil in Mr. Hyde is more repulsive than the trio of villainy in The Ebb Tide, where it is heightened against the … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

A Child’s Garden of Verses – Robert Louis Stevenson

In “A Child’s Garden of Verses” all sorts of curious child’s thoughts, quaint ideas and humor are jumbled in together and jostle one another on the pages bubbling over with mirth and sunny expression. Yet we can scarcely read a line without perceiving under all this the warmth and depth of heart of the man, Stevenson. If we call to mind what he says in one of his essays, that the true mark of the romancist is ” to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader and to obey the ideal laws of the day dream,” then the farther we read the more we are struck by his wealth of sympathy. … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

David Balfour- Robert Louis Stevenson

The sequel to ‘Kidnapped’, written after an interval of six years, marks a notable development of Stevenson’s powers. In ‘Kidnapped’ the Appin murder is a mere glimpse ; in ‘David Balfour’ the story is deeply involved with the trial which followed it and with the personages which figured in this piece of the aftermath of the ’45 in the Highlands. It is historical in a much larger measure and closer relation than the tale of which it is the continuation ; it depends so much less on the element of excitement, and so much more on its drawings of people, that the two scarcely make a homogeneous work.

David Balfour

Format: Paperback.

David Balfour.

ISBN: … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Ballads – Robert Louis Stevenson

The most ambitious and, if one excepts the Child’s Garden, the best of Stevenson’s work in verse belongs to his thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth years. The ballad was a literary form which he did not attempt until his second visit to America. Ticonderoga, founded on a legend of the Camerons, was written at Saranac, and published in ‘ Scribner’s Magazine,’ December 1887. In the following year at Tautira in the island of Tahiti, he learnt the legend which in The Song of Rahero is told with a flood of savage gusto in keeping with its tragic subject. The ballad, and that of The Feast of Famine, in which were ‘strung together some of the more striking … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...