Dreams of Exile: Robert Louis Stevenson : A Biography [Hardcover]

Ian Bell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in Edinburgh, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) early on rejected the family business of designing and building lighthouses in favor of a writing career. Bell, a Scottish journalist, has captured the short but varied life of this accomplished author in an entertaining and detailed study. Plagued by tuberculosis, the adult Stevenson fled Scotland's rainy climate, opting instead for the French Riviera and later for the United States, where he traveled in search of Fanny Osbourne, the married American he loved. They married in 1880, signalling the start of his most productive period, that of Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). The couple would later travel throughout the South Seas, eventually settling on the island of Samoa, where Stevenson spent his last years. Clearly a Stevenson devotee, Bell in his sympathetic portrait provides insight into his subject's eventful life and his equally eventful writing career.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Stevenson's own life reads like an adventure tale: a bad beginning as an only child, sickly and coddled; a bohemian youth spent in Edinburgh and France; a long struggle against tuberculosis; marriage to an American woman ten years his senior; and travels through America, Europe, and the South Seas. Although best known for his adventure tales ( Treasure Island , Kidnapped ), Stevenson is revealed as a serious writer of the Victorian era who dealt with moral choices and broke new ground with his conception of narrative style. In Stevenson's deep love of Scotland, Scottish journalist Bell finds the roots of Stevenson's sympathy with the people of the South Seas and their disappearing culture. In the Calvinism of Presbyterian Scotland, he finds the underlying obsession with evil, which led to the writing of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Bell has written a vivid and sensitive biography with a minimum of textual analysis. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Lesley Jorbin, Cleveland State Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 296 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; 1st American Edition edition (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805028072
• ISBN-13: 978-0805028072
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,514,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Rounded Portrait, February 9, 2007

By 

John R. Lindermuth "J. R. Lindermuth, author ... (Coal Township PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dreams of Exile: Robert Louis Stevenson : A Biography (Hardcover)

There have been many biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson. But, Ian Bell offers insight on aspects of the man and the writer missed or ignored by his contemporaries and those who chose to examine only one area of his life.

RLS is variously seen as a writer of adventure stories for the young, a skilled essayist, a poet, a frail genius fated to die young, to name a few. He was all of these and more. Bell provides in less than 300 pages a well-rounded portrait of the man, his life, his influences and his legacy.

One of the more interesting aspects explored is the variety of influences on Stevenson's writing and how they expanded under his imagination. As Bell points out early on in the book "Had he not been born in Edinburgh, he might have enjoyed better health; had he been healthier, he might not have traveled so much; had he not traveled, he would not have written as he did."

Born into a family that had risen from the soil to prosper as lighthouse engineers, he was much influenced by the environment in which he was raised and the principles held by his ancestors, including a dour Calvinism which provided the obsession with evil so evident in works like "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Many of his tales can be traced back to youthful fantasies stemming from ghost stories he heard from his nurse, Alison "Cummy" Cunningham.

Bell also explores the influence of his preference for older women which led to his marriage to the American divorcee Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne and his subsequent adoption of her family, which was often detrimental to his own best interests.

Lastly, there is the South Pacific where he found himself sympathizing with the native peoples and seeing similarities between their treatment by the so-called civilized nations and the way in which his native Scotland was treated by England.

Stevenson was only 44 when he died and, as Bell points out, barely into his maturity as an artist. What he might yet have achieved had he lived can only be surmised. But, this biography offers much reason to return once more to those books we read mainly for entertainment in our youth.