Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson

From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction Best of 2025 Lists: Wall Street Journal, Top 10 • Economist • Times Literary Supplement • Air Mail, Top 10 • Christian Science Monitor, Top 25 • Washington Post, Notable Works of Nonfiction • Literary Hub, “Ultimate Best Books” • World Today Journal, Top 25 “Damrosch brings to Stevenson’s life the calm, humane interpretive powers that he deployed with such success in . . . The Club. . . . [An] excellent book.”―Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smoldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,” he wrote, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific. Samoan friends named Stevenson “Storyteller.” Reading, he said, “should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.” His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories “one of the forms of happiness,” and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist. In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods―playful, imaginative, at times tragic.
ASIN: 0300268629
VSKU: DBV.0300268629.G
Condition: Good
Author/Artist:Damrosch, Leo
Binding: Hardcover
Note: Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.
Condition Notes: Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly!