Robert Louis Stevenson, página 16 de 78

This volume includes the collected letters of the well-known author. Hundreds and hundreds of writings are included, divided into the following sections:Letters From SamoaLetters To Young PeopleStudent Days At EdinburghAdvocate And AuthorThe Amateur EmigrantAlpine Winters And Highland SummersThe Riviera AgainMarseilles And HyeresLife At BournemouthThe United States Again; Winter In The AdirondacksPacific VoyagesLife In Samoa

The sequel to Kidnapped, written after an interval of six years, marks, as is pointed out in the chapter on the former work, a notable development of Stevensons powers. In Kidnapped the Appin murder is a mere ghmpse ; in Catriona the story is deeply involved with the trial which followed it and with the personages which figured in this piece of the aftermath of the 45 in the Highlands. It is historical in a much larger measure and closer relation than the tale of which it is the continuation ; it depends so much less on the element of excitement, and so much more on its drawings of people, that the two scarcely make a homogeneous work.

Eine historische Abenteuernovelle um den jungen David Balfour, der für die Unschuld eines anderen kämpft und sich dabei in die schöne Catriona verliebt.

The title of the volume which includes The Beach of Falesa, The Bottle Imp, and The Isle of Voices. The Beach turns on the native dread of the spirit-devils in the woods, interwoven with which is the island life of natives and whites viewed through the eyes of a commonplace trade. It is a picture of the South Seas, very different from the idylls of Hermann Melville. In The Bottle Imp, the protagonist buys a bottle with an imp inside that grants wishes. However, the bottle is cursed; if the holder dies bearing it, their soul is forfeit to hell. The Isle of Voices is a fairytale of magic treasure.

The only book of Stevensons written in collaboration with his wife, to whose powers of invention and descriptive writing the greater part of it is due. It had its origin at the time of his slow and perilous recovery from the nearly fatal illness at Hyeres in the spring of 1884. Forbidden to speak and under orders to lie in darkness, the long hours were relieved by tales which Mrs. Stevenson made up for his amusement. A few months afterwards, when they had settled at Bournemouth, where Louis was to live the life of a delicate girl, these stories were drawn upon as material for a series planned on the lines of the New Arabian Nights of six years before. Though the form is broadly the same a set of interdependent narratives over which the long arm of coincidence was never more widely waved the style is notably different from that of the previous series. This is explained by the fact that only the prologue and epilogue and the tale of "The Explosive Bomb" are Stevensons own writing. All the rest of the book was the invention, and the actual writing of Mrs. Stevenson ; her husbands share in it consisting apparently in revisions and touches by which he was able with great facility to impress a large measure of his own style upon his wifes work.

Stevensons title for these tales of imagination clearly shows what he intended their character to be. Plainly they were not meant to be realistic. Their stilted, artificial style is out of keeping with such an object. They were evidently to be stories which are entertaining in the same way that the "Arabian Nights" is entertaining, with just as little pretence of realism. As a child in his grandfathers manse at Colinton he had devoured the eastern tales; the New Arabian Nights, written when he was twenty-eight, are a special form of literary invention which came easily from Stevensons habit of investing the most ordinary places and people with the wildest romance. The stories are peculiar in that their artificial style leaves one ungripped by the horror of adventure, such as those of The Suicide Club. But the artificiality was clearly deliberate; when he wanted, no one better than Stevenson could write tales of horror to make the flesh creep. He did in fact project a series of this kind, of which only one or two were completed. But in the New Arabian Nights it is easy to see his precise aim at a lighter effect. No doubt the pleasure in the technical problem at once Stevensons curse, and the source of his unequalled prose prompted this experiment.

This edition contains the whole of Mr. Stevensons poetical works, divided into the following sections:A Childs Garden Of VersesThe child aloneGarden DaysEnvoysUnderwoodsBalladsSongs Of TravelAddition