Storyteller

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 44. 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. The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific. Samoan friends named Stevenson ‘Storyteller’. In this book, 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.