Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography

click here for more details, find new or used items	Claire Harman Our price £6.99 (£9.99) New from £2.69 Used from £3.00 Pages: 448 (Paperback) ISBN: 0007113226 Pub: HarperPerennial Pub date: 2006-03-06 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 90794

Reader Reviews:

Under the wide and starry sky (7/7 people found this helpful)

For years Robert Louis Stevenson was known only to me as the author of "Kidnapped", "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" and "Treasure Island". Coming across a collection of photographs in a book by Alanna Knight in 1986 "RLS in the South Seas", made me aware of what an unconventional, not to say peculiar life, he had lead.
This biography by Claire Harman could not, I think, be more detailed. I am not entirely sure who, apart from anyone with a real love of this author, would pick it up. But the fact remains, because RLS had a fascinating life and surrounded himself with some extremely interesting people (and not always in a good way) this biography remains interesting -though at times I rather laboured with it. The photographs add huge interest.

Born in Edinburgh in 1850, RLS was the son of an engineer best known for designing lighthouses. Always a sickly child, Robert, usually known as Louis in later years, was forced to spend months on end in bed, giving inspiration later to well known poems such as "A Child's Garden of Verses" including the much loved "From a Railway Carriage" and "The Land of Counterpane".
His very early leanings towards writing were evident in his work, age 13, "The Baneful Potato" - an opera libretto. Stevenson Senior had an unusual attitude towards school for those times: "What a boy learns at school is to sit on his bum".
Although his father wanted him to become either an engineer or a lawyer, RLS was never really strong enough to pursue such a career. He met his future wife Fanny in France while she was still married to her first husband. He followed her to America, brought her back, and for a while they took up residence in Bournemouth. Eventually their restless wanderings took them around the south seas, and he died in Western Samoa in 1894 at the age of 44.

Finally I made the pilgrimage to Vailima, the house where he, his mother, his unstable wife, and her two children from her first marriage had lived. The trek up to the top of Mount Vaea in the tropical heat, alone and struggling over huge slippery boulders for an hour made me wonder how on earth they had carried RLS's body up there for burial. At the top, tranquil and calm in cool breezes, is the large white cement slab tomb. I am afraid to admit I lay on it fighting for breath for twenty minutes, then looked at the glorious view down towards Apia. Robert Louis Stevenson could not have chosen a better or more serene place to lie. May it always stay so wild and inacessible.

On the tomb are inscribed, first in Samoan, the words of Ruth to Naomi.
And second, the requiem written by the author himself:

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Similar Products

The Suicide Club (Dover Thrift Editions)

In the South Seas (Penguin Classics)

The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson (Modern Library)

The Lighthouse Stevensons (Stranger Than...)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror (Penguin Classics)

Categories

Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories: