robertlouisstevenson

301d

“It is an RLS hallmark, the quicksilver evolution of thought and the fabular turn, the victory of original perception”

—Amdrew O’Hagan stays overnight in Robert Louis Stevenson’s childhood home, 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh – via the London Review of Books

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/andrew-o-hagan/diary

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #RLSDay

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

301d

The Man Who Gave Away His Birthday – a Useless Information podcast

Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD, 13 November – but it’s not, strictly speaking, his birthday: in 1891 he gave the day to Annie Ide, the 14-year-old daughter of the US Commissioner to Samoa, who was unfortunate enough to have been born on Christmas Day

1/5

https://uselessinformation.org/annie-louisa-ide-cockran/

#Scottish #literature #19thCentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #RLSDay

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

294d

Whole Duty of Children
by Robert Louis Stevenson

A child should always say what’s true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table:
At least as far as he is able.

—from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

Today, 20 November, is World Children’s Day.

https://www.unicef.org/take-action/campaigns/world-childrens-day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #19thcentury #children #childrensliterature #kidlit #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

294d

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Escape at Bedtime”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Childrensliterature #kidlit #childhood #children #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #WorldChildrensDay

Escape at Bedtime
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

189d

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Land of Story-Books”
from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES
📚🛋️🦁

A poem for World Book Day (UK & Ireland)
🖼️ by Roger Duvoisin, 1944

@bookstodon

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #books #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #imagination #WorldBookDay #kidlit #childrensliterature

The Land of Story-Books
by Robert Louis Stevenson

At evening, when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter’s camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

I see the others far away
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books.

A black-and-white illustration for Robert Louis Stevenson's poem “The Land of Story-Books”. A large, black, ornate, Victorian armchair sits in a shadowy corner. A small boy peeks out behind it, pointing a toy rifle. Behind him are images from his imagination: a smouldering campfire; the faces of two (quite friendly-looking) lions; a native American, wearing a feathered war-bonnet and wielding a tomahawk, can be seen behind the chair; and a sly-looking wolf prowls on the left edge of the frame.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

281d

Robert Louis Stevenson died #OTD, 3 December, in 1894, aged 44. He is buried on Mt Vaea, on the island of Upolu in Samoa 🇼🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

📷 Thomas Andrew (1855–1939): Burial of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1894 / Le maliu o Tusitala i le tausaga 1894
🧵

1/6

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burial_and_grave_of_Robert_Louis_Stevenson_in_Samoa,_1894.jpg

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Samoa #Tusitala

A black-and-white photograph, showing the burial of Robert Louis Stevenson. About thirty or forty people – a few are of European origin but most are Samoan – stand solemnly in a thickly wooded area around what must be Stevenson's coffin, draped in cloth and leaves.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

264d

“If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon”

1/4

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Christmas

A double-page spread of an ornate layout of Stevenson’s “A Christmas Sermon” – a limited edition with gilded title, rules & initial capitals, by John Henry Nash (San Francisco, 1928)

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

262d

“Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention.”

—Robert Louis Stevenson, PICTURESQUE NOTES: EDINBURGH (1878)

🎨 : “Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper, 1853

1/3

Download PICTURESQUE NOTES as a free ebook from @gutenberg_org

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/382

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #Edinburgh #winter

“Snowballing Outside Edinburgh University”, by Samuel Bough (1822–1878). Watercolour on paper.

A mid-nineteenth-century street scene in Edinburgh. At a street corner, on either side of the road, two groups of youths are throwing snowballs at each other. Some people watch from windows; other onlookers stand by. On one side of the street two women and a child hurry past.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

237d

The strange case of Robert Louis Stevenson

Alastair Benn is joined by Professor Leo Damrosch, author of Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, to explore the life & legacy of the celebrated writer, including one of his most enduring literary achievements, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnJ2R6EgzZ0

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertlouisStevenson #JekyllandHyde

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

234d

Some good things have come from Davos …

“It was here that Robert Louis Stevenson overcame his writer’s block and finished Treasure Island; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started skiing in the Alps; and Thomas Mann thought of the idea for The Magic Mountain”

1/5

https://lithub.com/a-brief-literary-history-of-davos/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #SirArthurConanDoyle #Davos #writersblock #skiing #ThomasMann

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

144d

Happy birthday to Tim Curry – proven by ACTUAL SCIENCE to have given the pre-eminent screen portrayal of Long John Silver

From Braemar to Hollywood: The American Appropriation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pirates
—Richard J. Hill & Laura Eidam, Humanities 2020, 9(1)

@litstudies

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/1/10

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #cinema #adaptation #TreasureIsland #Muppets #MuppetTreasureIsland #TimCurry

One obvious obstacle to physical authenticity is Silver’s leg: cut “close by the hip” in the text, all the actors to play him are bipedal; therefore, they all had to fold and secure their left legs in what must presumably be a very uncomfortable position, making the role physically challenging (Stevenson [1883] 2012, p. 85). Such an arrangement must also make moving like Stevenson’s Silver very difficult. Fleming accounts for this by using an action double for Beery, most clearly in his murder of Tom, allowing the audience to believe in his physical prowess. Newton maneuvers impressively on the crutch but does little to convince the viewer of any physical threat. This fact allows for film adaptations to further soften the Silver character as we will discuss in the next two sections: where Stevenson’s Silver appears to use his disfigurement to disguise his physical abilities, making him dangerous, film adaptations often use it to blunt any real threat. Charlton Heston, for example, is a menacing presence in the 1990 Turner Pictures adaptation, but his age and awkwardness of movement are a clear contrast with Wyeth’s dynamic, nimble Silver. With the possible exception of Tim Curry—who is younger and more agile than his cinematic counterparts—in the playful 1996 film Muppet Treasure Island, the Silver of the screen must rely more on his wits, his charm, and his presence of character, than on any physical threat he poses, in order to manipulate his crew, Jim, or Jim’s friends.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

34d

#OTD, 7 Aug, 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson boarded the SS Devonia to make the ten-day passage from Greenock to New York to pursue his thwarted relationship with Fanny Osbourne. In THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT he gives a vivid, sharp, & engaging account of his (impoverished) travels to & in America – read the first 5 chapters free 👇️

1/3

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #travelwriting #RobertLouisStevenson #emigration

Book cover

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Amateur Emigrant
From the Clyde to Sandy Hook
Chapters I to V

On a blue-grey background, fading from dark to light from bottom to top, horizontal lines of blue-green spirals representing waves cover the bottom half of the page. The top line of spirals are coloured white.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

225d

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Read with Reece Shearsmith

Currently available on the BBC iPlayer: Reece Shearsmith narrates Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic work of gothic horror

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027pdf

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #horror #gothic

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

214d

Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story “The Bottle Imp” was first published (in English) on this day, 8 Feb, 1891, in the New York Herald. It was originally published in Samoan translation as “‘O le Fagu Aitu” in the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch)

A 👿 🧵

1/10

#Scottish #literature #shortstory #RobertLouisStevenson #19thcentury #Victorian #Pacific #Samoa #Hawaii #supernatural

A newspaper clipping from 1891, showing a title and the opening few lines of Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story "The Bottle Imp"

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne married #OTD, 19 May, 1880. In this article, Prof Penny Fielding explores the dangerous collaboration between RLS & his wife: granting female agency on the page & in life

1/3

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2017/01/06/a-dangerous-collaboration/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #RLS #WomenWriters

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

The Long Shadow of Scottish Gothic
31 July, Glasgow
Tickets £13.44

From ‘Tam o Shanter’ through Jekyll & Hyde to Alasdair Gray & Muriel Spark, the Gothic has a vicelike grip on the Scottish imagination. Dr Valentina Bold & Prof Liam McIlvanney discuss Liam’s new psychological thriller THE GOOD FATHER, the enduring appeal of Scottish Gothic, & our fascination with the dark side

https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/the-long-shadow-of-scottish-gothic-liam-mcilvanney

#Scottish #literature #gothic #RobertBurns #RobertLouisStevenson #AlasdairGray #MurielSpark

Edited 1y ago

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Scottish Scholars & Secrets: Developments of Dark Academia in Edinburgh
24 June, free online

Natasha Anderson finds roots of Dark Academia running through Edinburgh’s gothic literary traditions, in works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark, & Ian Rankin.

Part of Reading Scotland from Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz

@litstudies

https://www.scotland.uni-mainz.de/reading-scotland/

#Scottish #literature #gothic #DarkAcademia #Edinburgh #RobertLouisStevenson #MurielSpark #IanRankin

Reading Scotland with Natasha Anderson
Scottish Scholars and Secrets: Developments of Dark Academia in Edinburgh

Tuesday 24th June 2025
6:00–7:30 pm (German time) on MS Teams

www.scotland.uni-mainz.de

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day…

—Robert Louis Stevenson, “Bed in Summer”
published in A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885)

#Scottish #literature #poem 3poetry #summer #kidlit #19thcentury #Victorian #Edinburgh #RobertLouisStevenson

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

“When the lights come out at sundown along the shores of Scotland, I am proud to think they burn more brightly for the genius of my father.”
—from MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF, Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncompleted (indeed, barely begun) autobiography

Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), lighthouse engineer & father of Robert Louis Stevenson, was born #OTD, 22 July

1/2

#Scottish #literature #Victorian #19thcentury #lighthouse #engineer #engineering #RobertLouisStevenson

Sepia photograph of Thomas Stevenson – a pensive-looking head-and-shoulders portrait of a Victorian gentleman, balding, clean-shaven with side-whiskers, his left hand raised to touch his face. A ring is visible on the pinkie of his left hand.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Call for papers:
(Un)natural Stevenson: Wild transgressions across literature, ecology, science & gender
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 11–12 May 2026

This conference aims to explore the concept of nature/natural in Robert Louis Stevenson’s work, & to investigate Stevenson both as a writer of dichotomies/dualisms & of their wild transgressions

@litstudies

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EoselkYayxzSXzW36aDZTbZv_SQt8cCG/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #LiteraryStudies #ecology #science #gender

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Scottish Scholars & Secrets: Developments of Dark Academia in Edinburgh – from 24 June 2025

Natasha Anderson finds roots of Dark Academia running through Edinburgh’s gothic literary traditions, in works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark, & Ian Rankin

@litstudies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahpagiSHK78

#Scottish #literature #gothic #Edinburgh #DarkAcademia #RobertLouisStevenson #MurielSpark #IanRankin

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

#OTD, 7 Aug, 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson boarded the SS Devonia to make the ten-day passage from Greenock to New York to pursue his thwarted relationship with Fanny Osbourne. In THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT he gives a vivid, sharp, & engaging account of his (impoverished) travels to & in America – read the first 5 chapters free 👇

1/2

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/free-publications/the_amateur_emigrant/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #travelwriting #RobertLouisStevenson #emigration

Alt text

Book cover

Robert Louis Stevenson
The Amateur Emigrant
From the Clyde to Sandy Hook
Chapters I to V

On a blue-grey background, fading from dark to light from bottom to top, horizontal lines of blue-green spirals representing waves cover the bottom half of the page. The top line of spirals are coloured white.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

189d

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor.
“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”

For World Book Day (UK & Ireland), a fable about a book: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Reader”

@bookstodon

#Scottish #literature #RobertLouisStevenson #fables #shortstories #flashfiction #microfiction #19thcentury #Victorian

XI—THE READER

“I never read such an impious book,” said the reader, throwing it on the floor.

“You need not hurt me,” said the book; “you will only get less for me second hand, and I did not write myself.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “My quarrel is with your author.”

“Ah, well,” said the book, “you need not buy his rant.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “But I thought him such a cheerful writer.”

“I find him so,” said the book.

“You must be differently made from me,” said the reader.

“Let me tell you a fable,” said the book. “There were two men wrecked upon a desert island; one of them made believe he was at home, the other admitted—”

“O, I know your kind of fable,” said the reader. “They both died.”

“And so they did,” said the book. “no doubt of that. And everybody else.”

“That is true,” said the reader. “Push it a little further for this once. And when they were all dead?”

“They were in God’s hands, the same as before,” said the book.

“Not much to boast of, by your account,” cried the reader.

“Who is impious now?” said the book.

And the reader put him on the fire.

The coward crouches from the rod,
And loathes the iron face of God.

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

114d

Robert Louis Stevenson & Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne married #OTD, 19 May, 1880. In this article, Prof Penny Fielding explores the dangerous collaboration between RLS & his wife: granting female agency on the page & in life

1/3

https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2017/01/06/a-dangerous-collaboration/

#Scottish #literature #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson #RLS #WomenWriters

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

112d

“Robert Louis Stevenson was neither a medical doctor nor a dentist, but undeniably, his character and writings were significantly influenced by the medical culture of his time in Edinburgh’s Old Town, with our College having played a central role”

https://www.rcsed.ac.uk/news-resources/rcsed-blog/2026/may/dental-dean-update-incisive-ink-the-curious-connections-between-robert-louis-stevenson-and-rcsed

#Scottish #literature #Edinburgh #EdinburghUniversity #RSCEd #19thcentury #Victorian #RobertLouisStevenson

A metal plaque attached to the wall of Number 1 Drummond Street at the University of Edinburgh. The plaque reads:

IN MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 1850-1894, son and student of Edinburgh.

“and when I remembered all that I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should make a mere shipwreck, and yet timidly hoped not; how I feared I should never have a friend far less a wife, and yet passionately hoped I might; how I hoped (if I did not take to drink) I should possibly write one little book. And then now – what a change! I feel somehow as if I should like the incident set upon a brass plate at the corner of that dreary thoroughfare, for all students to read, poor devils, when their hearts are down.”

from the South Seas, September 1888

Presented on behalf of all Stevenson lovers ....... September 1995

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

Previous Page Next Page