St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England [Paperback]

Robert Louis Stevenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2006

Short excerpt: It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at last into the hands of the enemy.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, the son of an engineer. He briefly studied engineering, then law, and contributed to university magazines while a student. Despite life-long poor health, he was an enthusiastic traveller, writing about European travels in the late 1870s and marrying in America in 1879. He contributed to various periodicals, writing first essays and later fiction. His first novel was Treasure Island in 1883, intended for his stepson, who collaborated with Stevenson on two later novels. Some of Stevenson's subsequent novels are insubstantial popular romances, but others possess a deepening psychological intensity. He also wrote a handful of plays in collaboration with W.E. Henley. In 1888, he left England for his health, and never returned, eventually settling in Samoa after travelling in the Pacific islands. His time here was one of relatively good health and considerable writing, as well as of deepening concern for the Polynesian islanders under European exploitation, expressed in fictional and factual writing from his final years, some of which was so contrary to contemporary culture that a full text remained unavailable until well after Stevenson's death. R. L. Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage in 1894. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: BiblioBazaar (July 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1426411014
• ISBN-13: 978-1426411014
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,111,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a novelist, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. In 1883, while bedridden with tuberculosis, he wrote what would become one of the best known and most beloved collections of children's poetry in the English language, A Child's Garden of Verses. Block City is taken from that collection. Stevenson is also the author of such classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent fun, nice romance., November 14, 2009

By 

D. MATRANGA (Samarkand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: St. Ives, Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (Cambridge Scholars Publishing Classics Texts) (Paperback)

Robert Louis Stevenson had an ability -- an especially preternatural one at that -- to create iconic fiction. Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped all have managed to become so ingrained in our collective unconscious that even if we don't read the books we know the characters and story as if we had. They are part of that select and somewhat shopworn literary crew that number familiars such as Hamlet, Don Quixote, and Ahab among its members.

Yet there is more (much more in fact) to Stevenson than just memorable archetypes. I urge everyone to give some of the other works -- books like Catriona and An Inland Voyage -- a chance in order to get a true glimpse of the great ease, tremendous narrative skill and genial wit Stevenson's writings posses. Those books, as well as this one, are so pleasing, especially those who appreciate the finely modulated, masterly prose of a good-natured humorist. The saddest aspect of this particular work is the unfinished ending. Sadly Stevenson's death brought to an end this narrative, as it did I'm certain to a whole slew of others. It's also a collaborative effort on the part of his step-son Lloyd Osborne who I believe took the story down as Stevenson narrated from a convalescent state. There was another successful collaboration between the two men and one that shows the hand of Osborne more clearly called The Wrong Box, the plot there being a crafty device that must have sprung to life in the brain of one of Scotland's most celebrated raconteurs.