Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson [Hardcover]

Claire Harman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Harman, the skillful biographer of Fanny Burney and editor of Stevenson's poems, stories and essays, writes, "some things become less knowable about a subject the more data accrues around them." Stevenson's short life (1850–1894), plagued by ill health, took him from Edinburgh to California and finally to the South Seas, creating a romanticized reputation along the way. Celebrated as the accomplished essayist of Virginibus Puerisque and the bestselling author of Treasure Island and A Child's Garden of Verses, Stevenson frustrated his literary friends W.E. Henley and Sidney Colvin with a creative output that never produced their expected masterpiece. He also estranged them with his uxorious marriage to a strong-willed older American divorcée, Fanny Osbourne, whom Harman portrays sympathetically enough (especially the possibility of a failed pregnancy early in their relationship). Harman doesn't delve too deeply into the psychology of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's author. In interpreting Stevenson the writer, she emphasizes his restless, multigenre dilettantism, which resulted in many false starts and incomplete plays, stories and novels. Stevenson's popularity as an author may always outstrip the biographical record, but this readable narrative of his kaleidoscopically colorful life helps narrow the gap. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* There are many Stevenson biographies, recently including Philip Callow's Louis (2001), Frank McLynn's Robert Louis Stevenson (1994), and Ian Bell's Dreams of Exile (1993). Do we need another? In the view of the biographer of Sylvia Townsend Warner (1995) and Fanny Burney (2001), yes, for exiled Scot and quintessential storyteller Stevenson has been underappreciated. He was, she says, an influential thinker often wildly ahead of his time. So she offers a deeply nuanced portrait of an amazingly complex figure. As she notes, Stevenson was an iconoclast and one of the least "Victorian" of Victorian authors. His interest in psychology anticipated the psychology craze of the twentieth century. Moreover, the form of writing he preferred--the short story and the novella--gained in popularity only after he died. Much of what Harman writes about will be familiar to anyone knowledgeable about Stevenson's life and work, but she offers her own interpretations. She is especially interested in Stevenson's preoccupation with the "double," the collaboration of his conscious and unconscious selves. Meticulously researched and well written, Harman's book presents Stevenson as both artist and man: brilliant and quirky, frail and indestructible, likable and exasperating, forever the outcast. One suspects that RLS, a thoroughly modern figure caught in the time warp of the wrong century, would have flourished in our own day. Myself & the Other Fellow is a worthy addition to the Stevenson canon. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Harper (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066209846
• ISBN-13: 978-0066209845
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,204,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Claire Harman is the award-winning author of three major literary biographies, Sylvia Townsend Warner (1989), Fanny Burney (2000), Robert Louis Stevenson (2005) and of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Comquered the World (2009), a biographical study of Jane Austen's enduring appeal. She is the editor of Sylvia Townsend Warner's poems and diaries and of stories and essays by Robert Louis Stevenson, among other works. Claire teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University in New York City and writes regularly for the literary press on both sides of the Atlantic. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written study of an unusual character, July 20, 2006

By 

o dubhthaigh (north rustico, pei, canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Hardcover)

RLS was born lucky, and inspite of his early demise, died lucky as well. That point comes through repeatedly in this well crafted and well researched account of an author who seemed more to happen upon his craft than cultivate it. You come away from this book that until the very last part of his life, what RLS was cultivating was a network of enablers who would molly coddle his feints of affliction. There's enough material here to keep a team of shrinks busy for decades, but essentially, through his father's generosity and vicarious desires to be something other than a member of the family firm, and his mother's indulgent mothering, RLS would have died quick had he not been heir to remarkable fortunes that kept him, if not always in high style, at least kept him going.
And yet, there was this other side of him that sought his own mark in the world, be it standing in as father to his wife's children, taking up the cause of indigenous peoples, exploring the vulnerability of psyches quite like his own. I found RLS to be an engaging character and an intriguing champion in the last 5 or 6 years of his life. He is credited in this book with arriving at the split personality crucible years before Freud copped on, at cultivating realism and post-modern fiction before even modernism had arrived, and yet he will be in the minds of most of us, always the author of Treasure Island. I must say that I have re-read KIDNAPPED with a very different interest after reading the analyses Harmon effects.
It's also clear that RLS was trapped by TI and even by the Hollywoodization of Jeckyll & Hyde - it isn't what Spencer Tracey would have you believe. RLS was also among the first celebrities who was victimized by the press and papparazzi, pirated by bootleggers (odd, eh?), and hounded by an adoring fan based that fetishized his personality. Perhaps he was the first Beatle. In any case, as celebrated as other writers had been, RLS seemed to break through to some other level of ecstacy in the minds of his fans, which also seemed to be the turning point when he decided to be less of a victim himself.
In any case, if you have any interest in RLS, this is a very worthy study and one that will have you re-consider his efforts, particularly his later ones.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dense material, but worth the time., August 24, 2006

By 

Harrison Diamond (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Hardcover)

When choosing a book to read this summer, I felt it would be a welcome change from the usual weighty novels I have chosen historically to select an intense nonfiction work. Perusing some recent acquisitions, I selected this book because I wished to learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson as a person. I set out to find out about the person behind the famous Treasure Island and the creator of the characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Claire Harman managed to craft an extremely comprehensive and dense biography of this complex man that not only tracked his life achievements and the basics of his youth, education, work experience, and so forth, but was able to delve into his family history and how it affected him. Harman makes very extensive use of primary source material, be it letters or Stevenson's own published writings. At times this is extensive almost to a fault- once or twice I wanted to see fewer quotations, supplemented by more of her writing. Apart from the occasional over-reliance on quotes, the only problem I had at first was her use of a number of different terms for RLS, in a family possessing several members with some components of his name for theirs.
The biographer analyzes how this writing reflects his personality and the events of his life, and speculates as to the inspirations for several of his characters. I was particularly interested when she highlighted some parallels between his own personal thoughts, fears, and dreams, and what later ended up in some of his more famous works.
She did not, however, simply spend time on his writings and letters, but was sure to dig into his personal relationships, friendships, and even loves and how they affected him. His health also becomes a key topic of discussion, and it is interesting to watch as Harman tracks RLS' health in relation to the state of his family relations and friendships. And by health, Harman does not limit herself to exploring the physical side of his condition, but also examines his emotional health and how it affected him over time with changing circumstances. She emphasizes religious views especially when discussing his conflicts with his parents, for they feared for his spiritual health in addition to his physical well-being.
Of course it would have been unfair if the situations he experienced were examined only from his perspective. Harman makes sure, however, to include the points of view of those around him, the other parties involved. It is much more useful to have both sides of the story presented than to be left with only partial knowledge of the circumstances.
I enjoyed the biography for the most part, however it was easy to get bogged down at times. Perhaps it is because Harman makes me want to slow down and enjoy every moment, grasp every detail of his life individually. Her attention to so many of the forces influencing him going back generations before his birth through his everyday life, however, grants those who undertake the task of reading this book a keen insight into Stevenson's personality and mind.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Didn't want it to end..., November 14, 2007

By 

Robert F. Pope Jr. (Akron, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (Paperback)

I just wanted to add my comment here because I loved this book and didn't want it to end. I lived with these people, surprised at every turn their lives took in this well-written and incredibly engaging narrative. What characters and what a journey!