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Myself and the Other Fellow
Claire Harman
"A deeply nuanced portrait of an amazingly complex figure . . . Meticulously researched and well written." Booklist
A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
HarperCollins
November 2005
Featuring: Robert Louis Stevenson
528 pages
ISBN: 0066209846
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
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 more than a century.
He was both engineer and aesthete, dutiful son and reckless
lover, Scotsman and South Sea Islander, Covenanter and
atheist. Stevenson's 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 Child's Garden of Verses, Travels with a
Donkey -- remain all-time favorites. His unique gift for
storytelling and dramatic characterization 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 recognized
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 postmodern innovators such as Borges and Nabokov.
Stevenson's recently collected correspondence shows him to
have been the least "Victorian" of Victorian writers; he
was a man of humour, resilience, and strongly uncoventional
views. With access to this and much previously unpublished
material, distinguished biographer Claire Harman has
written the most authoritative, comprehensive, and
perceptive portrait of Stevenson to date.
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