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#RobertLouisStevenson

3 posts1 participant0 posts today
Continued thread
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

“Without Fanny, there would be no Robert Louis Stevenson as we know him. He probably would not have written Treasure Island or finished Kidnapped, and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde might well have been a different story from the one the world knows today”

—Camille Peri on LitHub

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lithub.com/how-fanny-and-rober

Literary Hub · How Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson Defied Victorian Relationship Conventions“She was the only woman in the world worth dying for.” It was these words, which I came across in a reference to Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, that first caught my attention. They were writte…
#Scottish#literature#19thcentury
Continued thread
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

“I was struck by just how fun, playful and jesting Barrie was. And while I knew they developed a friendship, I didn’t realise just how much the friendship with Stevenson meant to Barrie”

—A Friendship in Letters: Michael Shaw brings together correspondence between two of Scotland’s most famous writers

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booksfromscotland.com/2020/11/

Books from Scotland · A Friendship in Letters - Books from Scotland'I was struck by just how fun, playful and jesting Barrie was. And while I knew they developed a friendship, I didn’t realise just how much the friendship with Stevenson meant to Barrie.'
#Scottish#literature#PeterPan
Continued thread
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“No Englishman of Byron’s age, character, and history would have had patience for long theological discussions on the way to fight for Greece; but the daft Gordon blood and the Aberdonian school-days kept their influence to the end.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, MEMORIES & PORTRAITS

Stevenson’s MEMORIES & PORTRAITS, a collection of autobiographical essays, is available as a free download from @gutenberg_org

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gutenberg.org/ebooks/381

Book cover: a dark burgundy cloth cover stamped with gold foil. The book title MEMORIES & PORTRAITS is enclosed within a square of stylised plant stems and heart-shaped leaves. The author's name R. L. STEVENSON is given on a scroll beneath the title.
#Scottish#literature#19thcentury
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

If this don’t fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, writing to W.E. Henley about TREASURE ISLAND (24 Aug 1881)

Matthew Bevis on TREASURE ISLAND & some of its spinoffs, in the London Review of Books, 25 Oct 2012

@bookstodon

lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n20/ma

London Review of Books · Matthew Bevis · Kids Gone Rotten: ‘Treasure Island’
#Scottish#literature#19thcentury
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Nod”
Published in A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)

Image: illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to “The Land of Nod”

Today, 14 March, is #WorldSleepDay 💤

poetryfoundation.org/poems/474

The Land of Nod by Robert Louis Stevenson From breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do— All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear.
Pen and ink illustration by Charles Robinson (1870–1937) to Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem "The Land of Nod", from A Child’s Garden of Verses (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1895). The illustration is tall and thin; the right side is dominated by a black crag (or possibly a strange tree-trunk), in front of which, in the bottom right-hand corner, stand two fantastical bird-like creatures with scruffy feathers and outsized, beaked heads. Although not overtly threatening or frightening, they are unsettling in their appearance. Behind them, a small child, head bowed, toils up-slope with the aid of a staff. Strange, cloudy outcrops and buildings are in the background. In the top left-hand corner, a giant, long-nosed face peers over the top of the cliff. The caption in the right-hand margin reads: "Up the mountain sides of dreams"
#Scottish#literature#kidlit
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“THE DYNAMITER is a hugely inventive & brilliant book, at once a political thriller, a blackly comic satire, & a female adventure”

Download a free ebook of THE DYNAMITER by Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson via @gutenberg_org

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gutenberg.org/ebooks/647

Project GutenbergThe Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift StevensonFree kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.
#Scottish#literature#19thcentury
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

Frances Matilda Van de Grift was born #OTD, 10 March, 1840, in Indianapolis. An author in her own right, in 1880 she married Robert Louis Stevenson, a man ten years her junior.

Professor Penny Fielding explores the dangerous collaboration between them in their 1885 co-authored novel THE DYNAMITER: granting female agency on the page & in life

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dangerouswomenproject.org/2017

#Scottish#literature#19thcentury
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

Michael Pedersen on Robert Louis Stevenson
1 May, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh – tickets £0–£10

Novelist & Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen, bestselling crime writer Val McDermid, filmmaker David Carrillo, & National Library curator Colin McIlroy explore the legacy of Robert Louis Stevenson

eventbrite.co.uk/e/michael-ped

EventbriteMichael Pedersen on Robert Louis StevensonAn evening exploring the legacy of one of Scotland’s most renowned authors in words, film, and conversation.
#Scottish#literature#RobertLouisStevenson
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor.
“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”

For #WorldBookDay (UK), a fable about a book: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Reader”

@bookstodon

Stevenson’s FABLES are little gems of #shortstories, #flashfiction & #microfiction – download all 20 as a free ebook here:

asls.org.uk/publications/books

XI—THE READER “I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor. “You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.” “That is true,” said the reader. “My quarrel is with your author.” “Ah, well,” said the book, “you need not buy his rant.” “That is true,” said the reader. “But I thought him such a cheerful writer.” “I find him so,” said the book. “You must be differently made from me,” said the reader. “Let me tell you a fable,” said the book. “There were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other admitted—” “O, I know your kind of fable,” said the reader. “They both died.” “And so they did,” said the book. “no doubt of that. And everybody else.” “That is true,” said the reader. “Push it a little further for this once. And when they were all dead?” “They were in God’s hands, the same as before,” said the book. “Not much to boast of, by your account,” cried the reader. “Who is impious now?” said the book. And the reader put him on the fire. The coward crouches from the rod, And loathes the iron face of God.
#Scottish#literature#RobertLouisStevenson
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

It was not the place of my birth that I loved,
nor the trail of her smoke nor the sun on the Forth,
nor the dark of her light nor her half-light,

but this land I have found
and the splash and the roar of her sea…

—Aileen Ballantyne, “Tusitala”
in TAKING FLIGHT (Luath, 2019)

The free exhibition “Tusitala: Pacific perspectives on Robert Louis Stevenson” is in the National Library of Scotland until 10 May 2025:

nls.uk/whats-on/tusitala/

Tusitala Aileen Ballantyne (‘Interviewing’ Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa) It was not the place of my birth that I loved, nor the trail of her smoke nor the sun on the Forth, nor the dark of her light nor her half-light, but this land I have found and the splash and the roar of her sea where the women take the hair from their heads to weave bamboo-grass mosaics and the ink dries on my pen as I write. I stand now on a hillside by the sweet vanilla planted and her people are my people. I remember, now and then, the pale light of the North: its soot-black towers and razored dusk-black steeples etched out in silhouette and the counterpane coughed red as I lay in bed, dreaming paper-chains of islands in my head. It was not the place of my birth that I loved but this land I have found where they call me Tusitala and I breathe with the sea.
#Scottish#literature#poem
Public
Bevan Thomas

"Of Silver we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life; but I dare say he met his old [African wife], and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small."
- Robert Louis Stevenson. "Treasure Island"

Long John Silver says farewell. As played by Robert Newton in Walt Disney's "Treasure Island."
#BookologyThursday#Literature#ChildrensLiterature
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Andrew Kuchling

Recent reading: Robert Louis Stevenson is best-known for TREASURE ISLAND, DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, THE BOTTLE IMP, and maybe the ghost story "Thrawn Janet". I just read THE BEACH OF FALESA, a short novel from late in Stevenson's life after he'd moved to the south Pacific.

In it, the narrator Mr Wiltshire has come to an island to open a trading post, exchanging trade goods with the native Kanakas for copra (whatever that is -- sun-dried coconut, apparently). There's already a trader on the island, the seemingly friendly Case, but he's two-faced; Case ruthlessly prevents Wiltshire from getting any business. Case has frightened the villagers into thinking he has demonic powers by setting up a temple in the wooded uplands of the island, and using glow-in-the-dark paint and eerie-sounding instruments to make it impressive. Wiltshire, who has fallen in love with the native woman Uma, sets out on a night-time expedition to destroy this facade.

RLS is a vivid writer, so Wiltshire's nighttime expedition to explore the uplands is an exciting sequence, and he's redeemed a bit by his affection for Uma. But the racial attitudes are, as you'd expect, not great, and the book ends with a particularly unfortunate paragraph -- not as bad as Lovecraft & Bishop's "Medusa's Coil", but uncomfortable for a modern reader. I can see why it's an obscure book today. The introduction in this edition compares it to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": a European man goes to a remote location and meets another man already there, who's corrupt and exploiting the locals.

Wikisource has the text online at en.wikisource.org/wiki/Island_ and archive.org has a few editions available.

en.wikisource.orgIsland nights' entertainments/The Beach of Falesá - Wikisource, the free online library
#books#bookstodon#RobertLouisStevenson
Continued thread
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

And OF COURSE there are pirates:

Industrious pirate! see him sweep
The lonely bosom of the deep,
And daily the horizon scan
From Hatteras or Matapan.
Be sure, before that pirate’s old,
He will have made a pot of gold,
And will retire from all his labours
And be respected by his neighbours.
You also scan your life’s horizon
For all that you can clap your eyes on.

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A copy of MORAL EMBLEMS. On the left-hand page there is a crude woodcut illustration of a figure wearing a broad-brimmed hat, crouched on a rock and peering out to sea through a telescope. Above the sketched-in sea are clouds and two simple v-shapes representing birds in flight. On the right-hand page is a short poem: Industrious pirate! see him sweep The lonely bosom of the deep, And daily the horizon scan From Hatteras or Matapan. Be sure, before that pirate’s old, He will have made a pot of gold, And will retire from all his labours And be respected by his neighbours. You also scan your life’s horizon For all that you can clap your eyes on.
#Scottish#literature#RobertLouisStevenson
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