Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography

(Paperback)

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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. Stevensons 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 Childs 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 With access to this and much previously unpublished material, Claire Harman, the acclaimed biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Fanny Burney, has written the most authoritative, comprehensive and perceptive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.

Reviews

'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' The Independent 'vivid and engaging ... Stevenson emerges from her pages as a vital, courageous, contrary and exhilarating figure' TLS 'A highly readable account that alters the usual perspective, setting Stevenson in a wider cultural environment' The Scotsman

Author Bio

Claire Harmans first book, a biography of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1989 and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for a book of value from a writer of growing stature. Her second, a life of Fanny Burney (2000), published by HarperCollins, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Her widely acclaimed biography of Robert Louis Stevenson was also published by HarperCollins in 2005. She has edited Warners Collected Poems (1982) and Diaries (1994) as well as works by Robert Louis Stevenson. Harman worked for the literary periodical PN Review in the 1980s and has taught at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. She has written for all the major British literary papers and currently teaches a course in creative writing at Columbia Universitys School of the Arts.