The most authoritative, comprehensive, perceptive biography of R.
L. Stevenson to date, using for the first time his collected
correspondence - which has been unavailable to all previous
writers. The short life of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) was as
adventurous as almost anything in his fiction: his travels,
illness, struggles to become a writer, relationships with his
volatile wife and step-family, friendships and quarrels have
fascinated readers for over a century. In his time he was both
engineer and aesthete, dutiful son and reckless lover, Scotsman and
South Sea Islander, Covenanter and atheist. Stevenson's books,
including 'Treasure Island', 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde' and 'Kidnapped', have achieved world fame; others - 'The
Master of Ballantrae', 'A Child's Garden of Verses', 'Travels with
a Donkey' - remain all-time favourites. His unique gift for
storytelling and dramatic characterisation has meant that some of
his characters live in the consciousness even of those who have
never read his work: Long John Silver, with his wooden leg and his
parrot, is more real to most people than any historical pirate,
while 'Jekyll and Hyde' has become a universally recognised term
for a split personality. No biography has yet done justice to the
complex, brilliant and troubled man who was responsible for so many
remarkable creations. His interest in psychology, genetics,
technology and feminism anticipated the concerns of the next
century, while his experiments in narrative technique inspired
post-modern innovators such as Borges and Nabokov. Stevenson's
recently collected correspondence shows him to have been the least
'Victorian' of Victorian writers, a man of humour, resilience and
strongly unconventional views. With access to this and much
previously unpublished material, Claire Harman, the acclaimed
biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Fanny Burney, has written
the most authoritative, comprehensive and perceptive portrait of
'RLS' to date.
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