The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 22juvenilia and Other Papers
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 22juvenilia and Other Papers
This volume gathers Robert Louis Stevenson's early essays and historical fragments, including his youthful writings on the Pentland Rising of 1666. Here we encounter Stevenson not yet the author of Treasure Island or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but an ambitious young writer testing his craft against the weight of Scottish history. The Pentland Rising was a real rebellion: Scottish Covenanters rose against Charles II's oppressive religious policies, and Stevenson, barely into his twenties, attempts to render this bloody episode in prose that already shows his gift for narrative tension. The writing is uneven, sometimes overwrought, occasionally brilliant. We see a young man still finding his voice, yet one who cannot help but populate his historical sketches with the atmospheric dread and moral gravity that would later define his gothic masterpieces. For Stevenson scholars and those curious about the making of a literary genius, these pages offer something rare: the raw material before the alchemy.
