R L Stevenson

Definitive modern edition of Stevenson's intriguing account of his emigration from Scotland to California'The Amateur Emigrant', an autobiographical account of Stevenson's voyage from Scotland to California in 1879, is a rich and provocative work of late-Victorian travel writing and cultural criticism. It describes vividly how Stevenson mixed with 'steerage' passengers aboard an Atlantic steamship and experienced the indignities of a transcontinental emigrant train. 'The Amateur Emigrant' engages critically with Victorian ideas about class, race, and gender, and makes an important contribution to the literature of emigration. Stevenson's middle-class family and friends found the work so transgressive that it was withdrawn from publication at proof stage. It was published in bowdlerized form in 1895 and since then has rarely been available in the form in which Stevenson composed it.Key FeaturesUses the original manuscript as copy text, making available the work as Stevenson originally composed itScholarly introduction situates The Amateur Emigrant in relation to important biographical, critical, historical, social, and generic contexts, and offers a summary of key critical responsesProvides full textual apparatus including variant readings from hitherto unavailable 1880 proofs, textual essay, explanatory notes, and chronologyExciting new visual material including scans of the manuscript and proofs and a map of Stevenson's journey

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde By Robert Louis StevensonStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll &amp Hyde. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil.Stevenson had long been intrigued by the idea of how human personalities can affect how to incorporate the interplay of good and evil into a story. While still a teenager, he developed a script for a play about Deacon Brodie, which he later reworked with the help of W. E.Henley and which was produced for the first time in 1882. In early 1884, he wrote the short story "Markheim", which he revised in 1884 for publication in a Christmas annual. According to his essay, "A Chapter on Dreams" (Scribner's, Jan. 1888), he racked his brains for an idea for a story and had a dream, and upon wakening had the intuition for two or three scenes that would appear in the story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Biographer Graham Balfour quoted Stevenson's wife Fanny Stevenson: In the small hours of one morning, ...] I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale." I had awakened him at the first transformation sceneLloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's stepson, wrote: "I don't believe that there was ever such a literary feat before as the writing of Dr Jekyll. I remember the first reading as though it were yesterday. Louis came downstairs in a fever read nearly half the book aloud and then, while we were still gasping, he was away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days."Inspiration may also have come from the writer's friendship with Edinburgh-based French teacher Eugene Chantrelle, who was convicted and executed for the murder of his wife in May 1878.Chantrelle, who had appeared to lead a normal life in the city, poisoned his wife with opium.

As Stevenson's most complete exercise in the art of the essay and the last of the 3 volumes of essays whose collection, arrangement and revision he planned and executed in his lifetime, this volume shows the brilliance of his mature style.

The first scholarly edition of Stevenson's essays, involving a full and comparative examination of manuscripts, magazine and volume publicationsThese essays, written from 1874 to 1880, established 'R.L.S.' as one of the prominent young writers of his time, a provocative and philosophically inclined bohemian playfully offering advice to his post-Darwinian generation about how to find contentment in a society of rigid bourgeois demands. In this first ever scholarly edition, the 1881 text is followed by extensive explanatory notes and the story of the composition and reception of each essay. The volume opens with a full listing of all Stevenson's essays followed by a substantial introductory discussion of Stevenson's career as essayist, the characteristics and literary contexts of his essays, and the critical and popular reception of his essays from the 1870s to the present day. The volume Introduction proper then presents the publication history of Virginibus Puerisque, the reception of the book and notable characteristics of the collection taken as a whole: its style and shape, and the aesthetic and ethical vision it presents. Key Features:Introductory overview of Stevenson as essayistComposition and publication history of each essayPublication history of the volume of collected essaysNotes identifying literary references, Stevenson's idiosyncratic diction, social and historical allusions and cross references to Stevenson's other works

Stevenson's unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, has been entirely re- edited from his final manuscript, revealing a rather different novel from the bowdlerised version produced posthumously by his friends. Stevenson revisits the conflicted Scotland of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott as well as that of his own youth, but also responds to recently published novels. A substantial essay explores the complex early publication history of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic, and exceptionally full explanatory notes and other background information are provided.

Treasure Island by R. Stevenson. Worldwide literature classic, among top 100 literary novels of all time. A must read for everybody.In the 1980s, Italo Calvino (the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death) said in his essay "Why Read the Classics?" that "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say," without any doubt this book can be considered a Classic This book is also a Bestseller because as Steinberg defined: "a bestseller as a book for which demand, within a short time of that book's initial publication, vastly exceeds what is then considered to be big sales."

'As a writer of the English language there has been no one to touch Stevenson in a hundred years...as a story-teller he is unsurpassed' George MacDonald Fraser When young David Balfour is orphaned he discovers some surprising truths about his family. His meeting with his uncle Ebenezer turns out to have disastrous consequences leading to kidnap and imprisonment on board a ship bound for the Carolinas. However, the voyage is full of incident and after violent conflict and a shipwreck, David finds himself in a daredevil chase across the Scottish Highlands in the company of the irrepressible warrior Alan Breck Stewart... ‘It stands as one of Robert Louis Stevenson's most compelling works - it was one of the author's favourites, and his affection for his central characters is unmistakable - and is a novel you want to press on people, knowing they'll love it’ Ian Rankin