Louis: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson [Hardcover]

Philip Callow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2001

There are many Stevensons behind the initials RLS, but the one that has endeared him to readers for so long is surely the fighter, battling to stay alive. Jorge Luis Borges described his brief life as courageous and heroic. In Philip Callow’s absorbing new biography, one can see why. Doctors, called repeatedly to what should have been his deathbed, would find a scarecrow, twitching and alive. A sickly child, Louis became in turn a bohemian dandy, a literary gypsy traipsing through the mountains of France with a donkey, and at twenty-eight the lover of an American woman ten years his senior, the fabulous Fanny. He escaped his Scottish town, his family, his friends who had mapped out a literary career for him in London, and instead went chaotically across the Atlantic and overland to California in poverty and despair to reach his beloved, whereupon he escaped into marriage and committed himself to being a nomad. He sailed the Pacific and dreamed of being an explorer; his restlessness was Victorian. With the power of a novelist and the grace of a poet (of which he is both), Philip Callow captures this great writer and his many contradictions. He was a born exile longing for home; a northerner who thrived on tropic sunshine; a near atheist who organized Sunday services for his Samoan workers. He has been called Scotland's finest writer of English prose, a more economical Walter Scott. As an essayist he equaled Hazlitt. In emotional crises he wept openly, to the embarrassment of his wife. “His feelings are always his reasons,” said Henry James, and caught in a sentence the secret of Stevenson’s popularity as one of the last of the classic storytellers. Louis brings him alive. With 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Clearly, Stevenson (1850-1894) understood the biographic potential of his life when he wrote An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. Callow is only the latest to map the author's route from Edinburgh to the South Seas. Following the recent publication of Stevenson's complete letters and Frank McLynn's centenary biography, Callow concentrates on producing a readable account while incorporating recent research. Stevenson's pampered but sickly childhood, his dandyish dilettantism at university and his rebellion against his generous father's rigid Presbyterianism led unsurprisingly to his literary career. His love for Fanny Osbourne, a married Californian a decade older than himself, launched him in unexpected directions. Embarking in pursuit when she returned to California from Europe, he barely survived a rough Atlantic crossing and the primitive, newly constructed transcontinental American railroad. Even after they married, his fragile lungs and spiritual restlessness kept them on the move while he wrote nonstop, notably Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, until they settled with Fanny's children in Samoa. Callow maintains a quick, steady pace right up to Stevenson's sudden death at 44. The biographer's admiration for his subject enlivens his text as he defends him against Bruce Chatwin's recent criticism (he called Travels "the prototype of the incompetent undergraduate voyage") and compares Stevenson to his previous weak-lunged biographic subjects, Chekhov and D.H. Lawrence. Relating this brief life briefly, Callow's biography works best as an introduction to Stevenson's many voyages, only some of which the novelist chronicled himself. 8 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr. 6)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Novelist and acclaimed biographer Callow (Chekhov) readily acknowledges that this offering is intended for readers "with no specialized knowledge," and he freely praises the books from which this one is drawn, including Frank McLynn's definitive 1994 biography Robert Louis Stevenson (LJ 11/1/94. o.p.). As G.K. Chesterton said, Stevenson had the instincts of a man cutting wood: sharp and clean. This was Stevenson's weakness as well as his strength; Twain and Dickens drew with clarity, but they shaded their characters in a way that Stevenson could not. Or chose not to, perhaps: his early poems have the raw power of Whitman's until he decided to write the sing-song material that secured him a place as a children's author yet cost him the chance of being taken seriously as a poet. Even if he showed that he understood the heart's complexities in his undisputed masterpiece, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson's charm as both writer and man is that he remained forever childlike. Louis is ideal for developing collections requiring a brief, up-to-date biography of a man as "strange and romantic," in the words of Henry James, as a character of his own creation, a solid craftsman who seemed content to remain on the fringes of great literature. David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; First Edition edition (February 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566633435
• ISBN-13: 978-1566633437
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #911,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing and vivid, June 6, 2001

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Louis: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Hardcover)

This biography of the life of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals a man who escaped his Scottish town and family and went overland to California in poverty to reach his love, where he became a nomad, dreamed of being an explorer, and became instead a noted author. The myths and realities surrounding Stevenson's life and adventures are revealing and vivid in Callow's fine portrait.