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'Rich and colourful!Harman's book is a delight from beginning to end.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Excellent!RLS has never been portrayed with such diligence and care!her portraits of Stevenson's nearest and dearest are also unsurpassed.' Independent on Sunday 'Cool, ironic and often funny!appreciative, extremely subtle!lively accessible!compelling.' Financial Times 'A smoothly assembled and readable study which confirms Stevenson as a writer of the first importance.' Independent 'Vivid and engaging!Stevenson emerges from her pages as a vital, courageous, contrary and exhilarating figure.' TLS Praise for 'Fanny Burney': 'A great achievement.' Andrew Marr, Observer 'Excellent.' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
Sunday Times
'This superb biography not only handles the familiar material with flair...but goes further than previous biographies...'
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Scotland-born author produced a number of interesting classical novels, e.g. "Kidnapped" or "Treasure Island" in his 44 years of life. Born and brought up by the Engineering family, Robert Louis Stephenson was expected to become an engineer or lawyer to engage the constuctions of lighthouses around Scotland. He was partly involved with this business. He demonstated outstanding literacy skills when he was very young and the Biographer Claire Harman put the description. There are collections of rare and intriguing pictures attached in this book, which are all worth looking at. Very sadly, he was diagnosed with severe tuberculous disease and suffered from it throughout his life. For this reason, he decided to leave cold and wet Scotland and abandon the family business, and travelled to the warmer place to cure his disease. Claire Harman has collected the references of where he had travelled and he had seen, and whom he had seen and met including doctors who had different opinions about his illness, fishermen, and teachers and close and distant friends and relatives, and conveys readers his eventful and short life and his literary world.
This biography shows the life of the talented man who suffered a lot of illness.
This biography shows the life of the talented man who suffered a lot of illness.
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