Memories and Portraits
1887
Stevenson turns his considerable gifts of observation and prose to the subject closest to home: himself. This collection of autobiographical essays, published in 1887, finds the author of Treasure Island wandering through the rooms of memory, sketching portraits of the people and places that shaped him. Most provocatively, he opens with a fierce meditation on being Scottish in England, exploring the peculiar ache of cultural displacement, the comedy of English ignorance about Scotland, and the power of language and regional identity to bind and divide. The essays that follow move between nostalgia and sharp insight, capturing a Scottish gardener's dignity, the peculiar charms of college friends, and the larger question of what it means to carry one's origins into unfamiliar territory. Stevenson's voice here is less the adventurer than the thoughtful exile, looking back with affection, humor, and occasional wistfulness at the formation of a writer's soul.
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“In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense.””
— Robert Louis Stevenson
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Stevenson, Robert Louis. Memories and Portraits. Lex, lex-books.com/book/memories-and-portraits-adc59a2e-51dc-430b-89a9-b01569c9d381.Stevenson, R. L. (1887). Memories and Portraits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/memories-and-portraits-adc59a2e-51dc-430b-89a9-b01569c9d381Stevenson, Robert Louis. Memories and Portraits. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/memories-and-portraits-adc59a2e-51dc-430b-89a9-b01569c9d381.
