- Hardcover: 528 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; illustrated edition edition (7 Feb 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007113218
- ISBN-13: 978-0007113217
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.4 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 811,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
James Buchan , The Guardian
'very good new biography'
Evening Standard
'superbly readable...she has excellent taste...a marvellous and eventful read'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a lucid and well-written account of Stevenson which comes closer than any other biography to capturing what I have always imagined to be the essence of RLS - the romantic adventurer, the man who had the wit and self-delusion to turn his back on a good Presbyterian career and, instead, pursue notoriety, fame, fun, misfortune, love, passion, and the delights of seeing what tomorrow might bring or where the next sun might set.
Claire Harman points to the way in which Stevenson's writings were disparaged by English critics. He comes from a Scottish storytelling tradition. He told too good a tale for the literary circles of London. "Jekyll & Hyde", "Treasure Island", "Kidnapped" are classic tales which a century and more after RLS's death still inspire the imagination. Few other authors have so consistently touched the minds and imaginations of children and adults alike.
Harman charts Stevenson's dissolute lifestyle, foregoing the pleasures of building lighthouses - his family had a genius for this and, though Louis himself showed great potential, he rejected a secure career for the pleasures of the flesh and the imagination. He roamed the streets of Edinburgh, a Mr.Hyde seeking escape from the Puritanical world of his respectable family. He set off travelling, trusting to his literary skills to keep him in pocket. He followed his love across the States. He eventually settled in a Pacific island paradise.
Stevenson's life story is as great an adventure as anything he ever wrote, but it is a life story flawed by recurring illness. Perhaps, had he been fitter, he might have failed to write so well. But this is a man with soul, a man with courage, a man with passion and adventure in his blood.
Excellent biography - a must read for any Stevenson fan.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
The Jekyll and Hyde of Scotland and Samoa
30 April 2006
Format:Hardcover
Claire Harman in her introduction to this work speaks about how Stevenson's work has not been accepted by school curricula in the English speaking world. I find that odd since in Troy New York many years ago Miss McGovern led us through 'Treasure Island'. And I believe a couple of years later we were also given 'Kidnappeed' to read. Nonetheless it is fair to say that Stevenson despite 'Jekyll and Hyde' "A Child's Garden of Verses" "Kidnapped" and "Treasure Island" has not been given as high a literary place as contemporaries whose works were less popular. And this when later on Borges and Nabakov other 'foreign writers' would come to hold him in the highest literary esteem.
Harman says that Stevenson was a hard- working, devoted writer who loved 'starting books' more than finishing them, and who thus left behind many incomplete works. She says he was a writer obsessed by the theme of the 'double' the Jekyll and Hyde also in himself.
The only son of two devoted parents he was sickly as a child. And in fact his whole life involves a moving from place to place to find a place of health. Despite the bad health, the suspected tuberculosis Stevenson worked and was recognized in his own time as a most brilliant writer of the greatest possible promise. But many of his contemporaries could not see why he wasted his time on the works he did. He too seemingly did not know the real value of his work. He did not take seriously 'Treasure Island' which he began by drawing a treasure- map for his stepson. The work he most took seriously a novel is not read or even heard of today.
Stevenson fell in love with a mother-of- two separated from her husband. He pursued his Fanny and together they made a new and improbable life on Samoa. His friends despised her as common, but Harman defends her as having been exemplary in caring for Stevenson in and through his final illness.
This is an informative life of one of the most important contributors to English literature in the nineteenth century-who was of course a Scot through and through as is shown in a number of his most important works.
Harman says that Stevenson was a hard- working, devoted writer who loved 'starting books' more than finishing them, and who thus left behind many incomplete works. She says he was a writer obsessed by the theme of the 'double' the Jekyll and Hyde also in himself.
The only son of two devoted parents he was sickly as a child. And in fact his whole life involves a moving from place to place to find a place of health. Despite the bad health, the suspected tuberculosis Stevenson worked and was recognized in his own time as a most brilliant writer of the greatest possible promise. But many of his contemporaries could not see why he wasted his time on the works he did. He too seemingly did not know the real value of his work. He did not take seriously 'Treasure Island' which he began by drawing a treasure- map for his stepson. The work he most took seriously a novel is not read or even heard of today.
Stevenson fell in love with a mother-of- two separated from her husband. He pursued his Fanny and together they made a new and improbable life on Samoa. His friends despised her as common, but Harman defends her as having been exemplary in caring for Stevenson in and through his final illness.
This is an informative life of one of the most important contributors to English literature in the nineteenth century-who was of course a Scot through and through as is shown in a number of his most important works.
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