Robert Louis Stevenson
9 books
- You get David Balfour older, more thoughtful, and still tangled in the aftermath of the Appin murder, with Alan Breck bringing his sharp-edged loyalty along for the ride. It’s slower and more talkative than Kidnapped, but the Edinburgh streets, courtroom maneuvering, and wary romance with Catriona have a lovely, lived-in richness.
- You get David Balfour’s wary coming-of-age alongside Alan Breck Stewart, a dazzling, exasperating Jacobite whose courage is matched by his vanity. The flight through the Highlands is brisk and beautifully observed, though the old-fashioned dialect and political detail take a little patience.
- A Child's Garden of Verses is here, children's poems that survive adulthood, alongside Underwoods and the travel lyrics, including the Requiem carved on his grave. Light-footed verse from a man often writing while ill; the ease is the art.
- If you come expecting Treasure Island, skip it; this is Stevenson playing at courtly comedy, all polished talk and marriage trouble in a toy German principality. But watching Otto wander his own kingdom incognito, hearing exactly what his subjects think of him, has a wry sting that lingers.
- If you liked Treasure Island's pace, this gives you the same headlong energy in the Wars of the Roses: outlaw arrows in the greenwood, a treacherous guardian, and a girl in disguise young Dick is slow to figure out. The mock-medieval dialogue takes some warming to.
- You get a dark, beautifully skewed adventure where the charming James Durrie keeps slipping beyond everyone’s grasp, while his moral, tormented brother Henry tries to live with the wreckage. The shifting narrators and haunted atmosphere make it stranger and more psychologically sharp than a straightforward swashbuckler.
- You can read it in an evening, and it's stranger than its reputation suggests. You follow Utterson, a dry London lawyer, piecing things together through fog and locked doors, and the dread builds slowly.
- Travel Essays non-fictionYou get Stevenson at his most companionable here, grumbling cheerfully through rain, bad beds, and the stubbornness of his donkey Modestine while noticing every landscape and passing stranger. The travel is often less important than his voice, so you’ll enjoy it if you like wandering prose with wit, digression, and a little discomfort.
- You think you know pirates until Long John Silver charms you the way he charms Jim, and then you catch yourself rooting for him anyway. It moves fast, reads easy, and that apple barrel scene still tightens your chest on a fifth read.