From a critically acclaimed biographer an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson's
life a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction Best of 2025 Lists: Wall Street
Journal Top 10 ¿ Economist ¿ Times Literary Supplement ¿ Air Mail Top 10 ¿ Christian
Science Monitor Top 25 ¿ Washington Post Notable Works of Nonfiction ¿ Literary Hub
"Ultimate Best Books" ¿ World Today Journal Top 25 "Damrosch brings to Stevenson's life the
calm humane interpretive powers that he deployed with such success in . . . The Club . . . .
[An] excellent book."-Meghan Cox Gurdon Wall Street Journal Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
is famed for Treasure Island Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but he
published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill
health he had immense vitality Mark Twain said his eyes burned with "smoldering rich fire."
Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers Stevenson set many stories in Scotland
but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. "I loved a ship " he wrote
"as a man loves burgundy or daybreak." The adventures were shared with his free-spirited
American wife Fanny with whom he moved to the South Pacific. Samoan friends named Stevenson
"Storyteller." Reading he said "should be absorbing and voluptuous we should gloat over a
book be rapt clean out of ourselves." His own books have been translated into dozens of
languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories "one of the forms of happiness " and other
modernist masters as various as Proust Nabokov and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness
as a literary artist. In Storyteller Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality
illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer's letters
in his many voices and moods-playful imaginative at times tragic.
