When one reads the nonfiction work of Robert Louis Stevenson along with the novels and short stories, a more complete portrait emerges of the author than that of the romantic vagabond one usually associates with his best-known fiction. The Stevenson of the nonfiction prose is a writer involved in the issues of his craft, his milieu, and his soul. Moreover, one can see the record of his maturation in critical essays, political tracts, biographies, and letters to family and friends. What Stevenson lacks, especially for the tastes of this age, is specificity and expertise: he has not the depth of such writers as John Ruskin, Walter Pater, or William Morris. But he was a shrewd observer of humankind, and his essays reveal his lively and perspicacious mind. Though he lacked originality, he created a rapport with the reader, who senses his enthusiastic embrace of life and art. If Stevenson at first wrote like one who only skimmed the surface of experience, by the end of his life he was passionately committed to his adopted land of Samoa, to his own history, and to the creation of his fiction.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born to Thomas and Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850. From the beginning he was sickly. Through much of his childhood he was attended by his faithful nurse, Alison Cunningham, known as Cummy in the family circle. She told him morbid stories about the Covenanters (the Scots Presbyterian martyrs), read aloud to him Victorian penny-serial novels, Bible stories, and the Psalms, and drilled the catechism into him, all with his parents' approval. Thomas Stevenson was quite a storyteller himself, and his wife doted on their only child, sitting in admiration while her precocious son expounded on religious dogma. Stevenson inevitably reacted to the morbidity of his religious education and to the stiffness of his family's middle-class values, but that rebellion would come only after he entered Edinburgh University.
The juvenilia that survives from his childhood shows an observer who was already sensitive to religious issues and Scottish history. Not surprisingly, the boy who listened to Cummy's religious tales first tried his hand at retelling Bible stories: "A History of Moses" was followed by "The Book of Joseph." When Stevenson was sixteen his family published a pamphlet he had written entitled The Pentland Rising, a recounting of the murder of Nonconformist Scots Presbyterians who rebelled against their royalist persecutors.
One of the emotions Stevenson wants the reader to feel is sympathy towards the people about whom he wrote. Stevenson goes about doing this by telling stories of people who are like his readers but who have bad luck or fewer opportunities and more disadvantages. Stevenson writes about women who have been in jail for long prison terms. These women committed small crimes like using drugs and stealing, rather than major crimes like rape and murder.
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 1308-1311. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
Magill, Frank N., John Steinback, Micllichap, Joseph R., ed. Critical, Survery of Long Fiction: English
“But it is more than 10 years since henry Jekyll became too fanciful. ”(Stevenson 14).
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002.
Murphy, B. & Shirley J. The Literary Encyclopedia. [nl], August 31, 2004. Available at: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2326. Access on: 22 Aug 2010.
Kerr, Calum A. "Literary Contexts in Novels: Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr.
The late eighteen hundreds was a time of abundant scientific discoveries, medical advances, and drug outbreaks (Wolf). Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson united all three happenings into a single novel. Stevenson grasped the fear of the Victorian people and the unfamiliar concepts and findings of scientific advances to create the novel as a horror (Wolf). Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the first authors to truly explore and inquire in the concept of the duality of man and how it affects us and our society Wolf. Stevenson’s mystery evolving into science fiction novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, fully elaborated on the deep dark side a person could conceal: “Poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is that of [Mr. Hyde] your new friend” (Stevenson 30). Wishing to rid the world of evil is a complex concept which in the end has shown to miscarry (Wolf).
“Lee, Harper 1926-.” Concise Major 21 Century Writers. Ed. Tracey L. Matthews. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 2136-2140. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
... child. Writing and reading brought Douglass joy and remained to bring him joy even when deceased. Douglass’s insane life may have left him a few scars and terrible memories, but it also molded him in to the magnificent person he had become which was a successful writer, passionate abolitionists and a knowledgeable gentleman.
This was made more apparent by the way Stevenson used diction. She had many examples of diction that strengthened her resolve greatly. Take for example when she says, “She and her boy friend, after a short season of gaiety, a year or two or more, vanished
The Life of Samuel Clemens A.K.A. Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain, the distinguished novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, and literary critic who ranks among the great figures of American Literature. Twain was born in Florida Missouri, in 1835, To John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton. As a new born Twain already had moved four times westward. In 1839 the family moved again, this time eastward to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was a frontier town of less than 500 residents. As small as the town was it offered valuable materials and opportunities for a young writer. Most of the residents knew Samuel well, considering they were on the lower half of the social scale, such as poor whites and slaves. The town of Hannibal was mostly used for farmers coming in from the countryside. It was also a river town, swamped with travelers moving up stream and down stream. Some of the travelers were steamboat men, circus performers, minstrel companies, and showboat actors. Since all this action was going on all the time, that opened a big door to the beginning of Samuel’s stories. It provided a huge source of literary material. Shortly after the death of his father in 1847, he ended the brief period of his schooling to become a printer’s apprentice. Like many nineteenth century authors, he was preparing for his writing career later in life. Working as a Printer’s apprentice he got practice as a typesetter and miscellaneous reading. The first thing Samuel wrote as a used piece was a few skits for his brothers Orion’s Hannibal newspaper and a sketch, for The Dandy Frightening The Squatter, published in Boston in 1852. The first real book ever published by Mark Twain was Life on the Mississippi River. Between 1853 and 1857 Clemens worked a journeyman printer in seven different places. During this trip of making sketches and writing stories, he began eastward by boat. Twain started writing letters telling about his visits to New York and the Middle West in 1867. On his trip he seemed to have gotten him self in a lot a trouble such as disorderly conduct. After time passed Mark kept writing short stories here and there and a few sketches also. However, in 1869 he became part owner of the Buffalo Express. In 1870 Mark met the girl of his dreams and Olivia Langdon and
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002. 987-1042.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997. 1829-96.
“Ralph Ellison.” Survey of American Literature. 1992. atu.edu. Arkansas Tech University, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2014.