Listings for Reader:
Robert Louis Stevenson
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George Meredith : The Egoist
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : [novels]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : [novel]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Shakespeare : [works]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Michel de Montaigne : [unknown]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Moliere [pseud] : [unknown]
'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry James : Portrait of a Lady
Robert Louis Stevenson to Henry James, November-early December 1887: "I must break out with the news that I can't bear the Portrait of a Lady. I read it all, and I wept, too; but I can't stand your having written it, and I beg you will write no more of the like."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Emile Zola : Pot-Bouille
'Read "Pot-Bouille"; "Pot-Bouille" made me laugh, there is one good character'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Forbes-Mitchell : Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-9
'I have just returned from reading a chapter of your book to my wife and her daughter. There was not a dry eye at the table, and the reader had to suspend operations, choking upon sobs. They were tears of pride and sympathy. I beg to offer you this family anecdote as a testimony to the success of your reminiscences. Of making books there is said to be no end, and I have made many. But if I could only think once, before I died, that I had given so much and such noble pleasure to a reader, I should be more than rewarded. You have made me proud and glad to be a Scotsman.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Lawrence L. Lynch : Shadowed by Three: A Detective Story
One of them asked what he had been reading. 'Lynch, of course,' said Louis promptly, with a twinkling in his eye. 'Lynch? Lynch?' The name was jotted down in a notebook and on cuffs. There was a bewildered air among them as they glanced at each other. They were all of the intelligentsia and considered themselves well up in modern literature, yet here was a name they had never heard. Louis was being perfectly truthful. He had been reading 'Shadowed by Three' and 'Dashing Kate, the Female Detective', shilling shockers that amused him so much he had noted the author's name and was looking for more of his works.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: Dashing Kate, the Female Detective
One of them asked what he had been reading. 'Lynch, of course,' said Louis promptly, with a twinkling in his eye. 'Lynch? Lynch?' The name was jotted down in a notebook and on cuffs. There was a bewildered air among them as they glanced at each other. They were all of the intelligentsia and considered themselves well up in modern literature, yet here was a name they had never heard. Louis was being perfectly truthful. He had been reading 'Shadowed by Three' and 'Dashing Kate, the Female Detective', shilling shockers that amused him so much he had noted the author's name and was looking for more of his works.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Browning :
Taking a book of Browning's poems from his pocket he showed Louis a verse which he said he could not understand...bending forward, his hands clasped, he gazed expectant, while Louis read over the poem. Alas, for the hero worshipper! This is what the Master said: 'I'm damned if I know what it means. It reads like cat's meat to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Father Damien, an Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu
Louis announced that he had written something he wanted us to hear. When we had taken our seats round the centre table he stood before us with a manuscript in his hand...then in his deep voice vibrant with emotion, with heightened colour and blazing eyes he read aloud the 'Father Damien Letter.' Never in my life have I heard anything so dramatic, so magnificent. There was deep feeling in every sentence - scorn, indignation, biting irony, infinite pity - and invective that fairly scorched and sizzled. The tears were in his eyes when he finished. Throwing the manuscript on the table he turned to his wife. She who had never failed him, rose to his feet, and holding out both hands to him in a gesture of enthusiasm, cried: 'Print it! Publish it!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : Weir of Hermiston
After lunch was always a pleasant time at Vailima...that was the time Louis usually chose to read aloud something he had written. We were an eager, attentive audience, and when he had finished he welcomed suggestions and we were free to say whatever we liked. Usually we were unanimously enthusiastic, especially over chapters of 'Weir of Hermiston'...once, however, he read a story called 'The Witch Woman' that none of us cared for very much. My mother said it showed the influence of a Swedish author Louis had been reading, and was not in his own clear, individual style. She made no comment when he sent it to his publisher, and nothing more was heard of 'The Witch Woman'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : The Witch Woman
After lunch was always a pleasant time at Vailima...that was the time Louis usually chose to read aloud something he had written. We were an eager, attentive audience, and when he had finished he welcomed suggestions and we were free to say whatever we liked. Usually we were unanimously enthusiastic, especially over chapters of 'Weir of Hermiston'...once, however, he read a story called 'The Witch Woman' that none of us cared for very much. My mother said it showed the influence of a Swedish author Louis had been reading, and was not in his own clear, individual style. She made no comment when he sent it to his publisher, and nothing more was heard of 'The Witch Woman'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson : Treasure Island
One day, as Louis was leaving the hotel, he stopped to send a message up to my mother by one of the 'Buttons', as they were called. The only boy present was sitting, deeply engrossed in a book. When Louis spoke to him, he made no answer but went on reading. Impatient, Louis plucked the book out of the boy's hand. It was 'Treasure Island'. Returning it instantly, he said: 'Go right on reading, my little man. Don't let anyone disturb you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Margaret Oliphant : Review of The Master of Ballantrae
On one occasion, he came to me, flourishing a paper wildly in the air...I thought he had suddenly inherited a fortune, or that something of an extreme value had fallen in his way. 'What in heaven's name is it?' I asked. 'This, my friend. For years a certain critic has practically damned my works - said there was nothing really in them - and now this person, whose ability I have always admired despite the fact that I have suffered, has declared: "Stevenson has at last produced one of the best books of the season, and the claim of his friends seems fully justified, for the work is full of genius."' His face was all aglow with feverish excitement. 'Who is this wonderful critic, Stevenson, whose praise you so enjoy? And what bitter things has he said of you before?' 'We will drop the severe things, Moors. You would never guess, if I gave you all morning, who it is who has at last admitted me to be in the front rank of my profession. It is Mrs Oliphant, my dear sir - Mrs Oliphant!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
unknown : Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper
'Noona seems to have a very interesting story in his bound up Cassell's Paper and I think we have one of them in our own.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Punch
'.. there is a picture in Punch and it is a man beating a great many drums ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Punch
'And I saw a Punch which I thought I would like so much....there was one queer picture in Mr Punch which I must tell you about'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
R M Ballantyne : Martin Rattler or a Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil
'I have got the book from Mrs Bell it is Martin Rattler.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Ovid : unknown
'I am getting on very well with Ovid.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Traditional Ballad : Shan Van Voght
'Oh my vessel's on the say says the shan van voght And I do not know what to say says the shan van voght.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Benjamin Disraeil : Alroy: a Romance
'Have you ever read Alroy by Disraeli?' [includes quotations from Alroy].
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexandre Dumas : Le Vicomte de Bragelonne
'I have read Bragelonne'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Babington Macaulay : History of England
'At present I am going for Macaulay's History and no novels at all.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: Good Words
'There is a nice little bit of poetry about that in an old number of Good Words.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Harrison Ainsworth : Jack Sheppard
.'.. poor old Jack Sheppard. I doubt not Ainsworth meant to be moral.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: Broadway
'Have you seen anything of the Broadway: I rather like it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
?Robert ?Wodrow : [MSS in the Advocates' Library]
'I spent most of yesterday in the Advocates' Library and got about half way through the catalogue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Henry Kingsley : Mademoiselle Mathilde
'Do you know Henry Kingsley. Read Mademoiselle Mathilde by him, now coming out in the Gentleman's Magazine ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Algernon Charles Swinburne : Poems and Ballads [first series]
'I suppose Poems and Ballads will stand in the way of a Laureateship.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : '1865-1866'
'... such cursed nonsense as the last thing in Good Words. Oh! Alfred Tennyson! Alfred Tennyson, oh!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : The Lotus Eaters/St Simeon Stylites
'By the way what awful trash Tennyson's serial poetry is just now. To think of the man who wrote the 'Lotus Eaters' 'St Simeon Stylites' et caetera.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Horace : Book II Ode III
'I send you three translations of a bit of Horace, in order to hear what you think of the last measure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Babington Macaulay : The History of England
'All the reading up is Macaulay, p.530 to 535 and then p. 616 to 630'. [The context of the reference suggests the text is Macaulay's History of England. RLS has been referring to pages 530-535, and 616-630 in his research for the play he is writing entitled Monmouth.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : The Golden Legend
"Can you find and send to me the last lines of Longfellow's Golden legend, beginning 'It is Lucifer, son of the air,' and so on. 'Since God put him there, he is God's minister for some good end.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel : unknown
'Hegel must either be frightfully clever, or a most egregious ass: I incline to the latter position.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Wodrow : The History of the Suffrings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution
'It contains more detailed accounts than anything I ever saw, except Wodrow ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Herbert : The Temple: The Church Porch xxii
'I have been reading a good deal of Herbert ... "Carve or discourse; do not famine fear, Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone
The Moonstone is frightfully interesting; isn't the detective prime?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Bible
"Do you think Job's birthday was the 29th of February 'As for that night let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined to the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.' [....] 'Where wast though when I laid the foundations of the earth? ... Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?' And so on to the end:'Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty answer him? He that reproveth God, let him answer it.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : unknown
'I am better now; but it leaves me in a state of intellectual prostration, fit for nothing but smoking, and reading Charles Baudelaire.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Fielding : unknown
'Therefore, good-bye, I am going to take my beer and sardines; after which to bed and a chapter or two of Fielding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
William Shakespeare : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Christopher Marlowe : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Fletcher : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Webster : unknown
'He and I have read the same books, and discuss Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Fletcher, Webster, and all the old authors.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edward Hyde (1st Earl of Clarendon) : The True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England
'I am reading Clarendon's Hist. Rebell. at present with which I am more pleased than I expected, which is saying a good deal'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Lucy Hutchinson : Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson
'I have possessed myself of Mrs Hutchinson, which, of course, I admire, etc'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry George Bohn : unknown
'It is necessary to explain, O Argive youth, that I have been reading the translations of Bohn, cunningly written with a reed upon the well-prepared tablets'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Contes Drolatiques
'... et lisais les Contes Drolatiqe de nostre feu Maistre de Balzac ...' [and I was reading the amusing stories of our master Balzac]
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
L G Silbergleit : Robert Burns' Lieder und Balladen [etc]
'Today, I got rather a curiosity - Lieder und Balladen von Robert Burns, translated by one Silbergleit, and not so ill done either.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Maud; A Monodrama
?I have just been reading "Maud". Do not fear, dear; it has not been unpleasant to me; I see and know and accept all the limitations without a grudge.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
unknown : [Roman law]
'I have been reading Roman Law...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
John Calvin : unknown
'I have been reading...Calvin.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
unknown : [Roman law]
'...I have been continuing to work at Roman Law...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
John Knox : unknown
'...I have been continuing to work at ... John Knox...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
'Struggling away at "Fables in Song" .'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
a fellow student of Robert Louis Stevenson : letter
'Yesterday I received a letter that gave me much pleasure from a poor fellow student of mine who has been all winter very ill, and seems to be but little better even now. He seems very pleased with "Ordered South". "A month ago," he says, "I could scarcely have ventured to read it -- today I felt on reading it as I did on the first day that I was able to sun myself in the open air" And much more to the like effect. It is very gratifying.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
'All right, I'll see what I can do. Before I could answer, I had to see the book; and my good father, after trying at all our libraries, bought it for me. I like the book; that is, some of it; and I'll try to lick up four or five pages for the "Fortnightly."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Sidney Colvin : unknown
'All right, I'll see what I can do....Does the "sans extract" mean that I [italics] simply God-damn-mustn't [end italics] put in an extract. Please explain...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: BookManuscript: Letter
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin : letter
'Jenkin wrote to say he would second me in such a nice little notelet. I shall go in for it (the Savile I mean) whether "V.H." is accepted or not, being now a man of means.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Sophie Garschine : letter
'Mme Garschine's was rather sad and gave me the blues a bit'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton : Fables in Song
?Friday. I have got on rather better with the ?Fables?; perhaps it won?t be a failure, though I still fear...Saturday...I just finished some of the deedest rubbish about Lord Lytton?s ?Fables?, that an intelligent editor ever shot into his waste paper basket.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Leslie Stephen : letter
'I have received such a nice long letter (four sides) from Leslie Stephen today; about my ?V. Hugo?. It is accepted.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Leslie Stephen : letter
?I send you L. Stephen?s letter, which is certainly very kind and jolly to get. Please show it, if you get a chance, to Mrs Sitwell.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Andrew Lang : letter
?You can tell Lang this. I heard from him, and will answer soon.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Frances Sitwell : letter
?Your letter came this morning. I own I am troubled about its contents: I fear for your health, dear friend, in such an ordeal as that to which you propose to subject yourself. Be wise, for all people?s sakes; and if there be real fear, as I imagine, for your precious life, rather front the ugliest alternative.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
unknown : Roman Law
?I am doing principally my Roman Law just now. It is really to me a great pleasure; and it keeps me out of the way of writing, for which I am not in the vein.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "On Lord Lytton's Fables in Song"
?Morley has accepted the "Fables" and I have seen it in proof and think less of it than ever.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Proof of the article
Herbert Spencer : unknown
'I am reading Herbert Spencer just now very hard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Eliot : Middlemarch
'Have you yet seen Middlemarch? You would not be quite so unsophisticated a visitor to Rome as Miss Brooke.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
William Makepeace Thackeray : The Adventures of Philip
'I have had all things considered and thanks principally to Philip, a very passable Christmas day [...] then went upstairs and read Phillip till lunchtime (you see I adhere to my own views as to how Philip should be spelt).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Henry Erskine : The Garb of Old Gaul
'Then there is Mr Brand's lantern and his Highland cloak; and the tale of how he, John Brand, right royally attired in the garb of old Gaul, presented a nosegay of roses to the Queen of the Netherlands.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Charles Dickens : Pickwick Papers Chapter 34
'You may be interested to hear that the Miss Jaffrays are reading: having only eyes and not a 'pair of patent double magnifying microscopes' (or whatever it was that dear Sam Weller said) ...
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Herbert Spencer : A System of Synthetic Philosophy
'Part III is 'the reconciliation', in Spencer's phrase, - a mean term between I and II, a minimistic retrospect on both.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frances Sitwell : letter
?I got a quiet seat behind a yew hedge and went away into a meditation. It [i.e. the windswept scene in the garden at Swanston Cottage] somehow reminded me of your letter from Bishopsbourne, now alas! in cinders. O I grudge those letters I burned.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter, Passage refers to various letters from Frances Sitwell to RLS, dates and subjects unspecified here. Letters received by RLS before 4 June 1874 [date ascribed by the editors to the cited passage].
Robert Louis Stevenson : Victor Hugo's Romances
?Yesterday, by the bye, I received the proof of "Victor Hugo"; it is not nicely written, but the stuff is capital, I think. Modesty is my most remarkable quality, I may say in passing.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay on ?Victor Hugo?s Romances?
George Sand : Comtesse de Rudolstadt
?I was out, behind the yew hedge, reading the "Comtesse de Rudolstadt" when I found my eyes grow weary and looked up from the book.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
George Sand : Consuelo
?By the way, dear, I must send you "Consuelo"; you said you had quite forgotten it, if I remember aright. And surely a book that that could divert me, when I thought myself on the very edge of the grave, from the work that I so much desired, and was yet unable to do, and from other thoughts both sweet and sorrowful, should somewhat support and amuse you under all the hard things that may be coming upon you. If it is to be had in Edinburgh you shall have it, dear, even before this letter.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Darwin : The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
'I bought Darwin's last book in despair, for I knew I could generally read Darwin, but it was a failure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "Victor Hugo's Romances"
'"Victor Hugo" has come; I like all your alterations vastly, except one which I don?t like, tho? I own something was needed there also.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay on ?Victor Hugo?s Romances?
Robert Louis Stevenson : [material on John Knox]
?Goodbye. I am at "Knox and the Women", which seems good stuff when I come to put it down; but the arrangement cost me some trouble.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Presumably numerous works by, and of general and specific reference to, Knox
Sidney Colvin : The Shadow of Death
'There is rather a nice article of Colvin?s in this "Macmillan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
D.V. Thomas : advertisement
'I can?t be more satisfactory [= about his travel plans]. I think I must be a relative of a man who advertises near here "[italics] D.V. Thomas [end italics], Purveyor of pure new milk?. Imagine anyone trusting to a man with so conditional a name for anything under heaven!'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
John Ruskin : Stones of Venice
'?I am reading Ruskin?s "Stones of Venice"with great pleasure. He can [italics] write [end italics] a few, can?t he?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : Du hast Diamenten und Perlen
'I [...] was singing after my own fashion "Du hast diamentem und Perlen"[...]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: song
Heinrich Heine : [poems]
'Try two of Schubert?s songs ?Ich ungl?cksel?ger Atlas? and ?Du sch?nes Fischerm?dchen?. They are very jolly.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Walt Whitman : probably Leaves of Grass
'I have read aloud my death-cycles from Walt Whitman this evening. I was very much affected myself, never so much before, and it fetched the auditory considerable. Reading these things that I like aloud when I am painfully excited is the keenest artistic pleasure I know: it does seem strange that these dependant arts ? singing, acting and in its small way, reading aloud ? seem the best rewarded of all arts. I am sure it is more exciting for me to read, than it was for W.W. to write: and how much more must this be so with singing!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Bob Stevenson : letter
I don?t know whether I imagined it, but I thought there seemed something wrong between us this afternoon.[?] Perhaps, however, you may think I have behaved nastily to you; and it just occurs to me that I have never explained how I did not answer your proposal about B. of A. I did not get your letter, until the Sunday; I then wrote immediately but, as it was so much too late, didn?t say anything about it. This was rude; and I am sorry, I did so; it shall not occur again.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Friedrich von Matthison : Adelaide
'... I find I have nothing to say that has not been already perfectly said and perfectly sung in Adelaide.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Paul : Epistle to the Philippians, I.3
'In a shop in Buchanan Street, there was exposed a little gold wristlet with 'Phil. 1.3' upon it; look it up in the New Testament and take the text, meine schone Freundin, as a message from me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: wristlet
Walter Scott : The Heart of Midlothian
'One gravestone was erected by Scott .. to the poor woman who served him as a heroine in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, and the inscription in its stiff Jedediah Cleishbotham fashion is not without something touching.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: gravestone
George Gordon Lord Byron : Mazeppa
'Try, by way of change, Byron?s "Mazeppa", you will be astonished. It is grand and no mistake, and one sees through it a fire, and a passion, and a rapid intuition of genius, that makes one rather sorry for one?s own generation of better writers and ? I don?t know what to say; I was going to say ?smaller men?; but that?s not right; read it and you will feel what I cannot express. Don't be put out by the beginning; persevere; and you will find yourself thrilled before you are at an end with it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : Notes on the Movements of Young Children.
'Many thanks. I have received the 15 quid, and the "Portfolio" proof.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay
Thomas Dick Lauder : Scottish Rivers
'I have written a review of Lauder?s "Scottish Rivers" for the "Academy" which I think you will like; I should not have done it just now, but I was in the humour ? and I did eat...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Emery Tylney : (in) Foxe's Book of Martyrs
'You may remember that I used to desire to outlive you: I have changed my cue: I should be left to speak in the words of surely the most affecting historical document in the world ? Emery Tylney?s character of George Wishart: ? ?O that the Lord had left her to me, her poor boy, that she might have finished what she had begun!? I can?t tell you how beautiful that whole paper is from which those words are imitated: I was reading it again the other day, and my heart came into my mouth when I got to that passage: one is so little prepared for such a cry of the soul amid the succinct details of life and manners that surround it. And the saying in my mind attaches itself to you: I have had to explain all round that you might understand the full meaning of the words, and how they are not simply my words, but have been sanctified by the fire of martyrdom and the name of one of the good, pure, quiet, delicate spirits of the Earth; and you needed to know that, to know why I like to apply them to you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'?Miss Griffin? is capital stuff; not the least dull, a little ragged and loquacious, of course. Go on. Give me more types in the same style; and when I have the lot , I?ll tell you about the?[end of extract]'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : unknown
'Today we saw the cathedral at Chester; and, far more delightful, saw and heard a certain inimitable verger who took us round. He was full of a certain recondite, far away humour that did not quite make you laugh at the time, but was somehow laughable to recollect. Moreover, he had so far a just imagination, and could put one in the right humour for seeing an old place, very much as, according to my favourite text, Scott's novels and poems do for one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
unknown : unknown
'[?] I am seen about the garden with large and aged quartos [?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Dickens : Christmas Stories (2, unnamed)
I' wonder if you ever read Dickens?s [italics] Christmas Books [end italics] ? I don?t know that I would recommend you to read them, because they are too much perhaps. I have only read two of them yet, and I have cried my eyes out, and had a terrible fight not to sob. But O, dear God, they are [italics] good [end italics] − and, I feel so good after them, and would do anything, yet and shall do anything, to make it a little better for people. I want to go out and comfort someone; I shall never listen to the nonsense they tell one, about not giving money −I [italics] shall [end italics] give money; not that I haven?t done so always, but I shall do it with a high hand now. O what a jolly thing it is for a man to have written books like these books, and just [italics] filled [end italics] people?s hearts with pity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : "On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places"
'I have the "PTFL" proof; and it is very fourth rate, I am afraid; not quite [italics] dead [end italics] you know, but ailing − very ailing.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy of RLS?s essay.
Robert Louis Stevenson : ?John Knox and his Relations with Women??
'I found the proof of ?John Knox? waiting me here, and have despatched it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Proof copy.
Katharine de Mattos : Included "Miss Griffin"?
'My dear Katharine, I have gone over your paper at last (I would have done it sooner, had I found the time) [?].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, RLS calls it "your paper".
Francis Quarles : Emblems
'Then your simile about the spider and the King?s palace is very grim and good; like a sort of Quarles emblem; and that sentence begins admirably, although its feet are of clay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'Then your simile about the spider and the King?s palace is very grim and good; like a sort of Quarles emblem; and that sentence begins admirably, although its feet are of clay.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
John Bunyan : The Pilgrim?s Progress from this world to that which is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream
'I can say this much that your paper has impressed me very much, and I shall never get the village out of my head; I know the place; it is called (to imitate Bunyan) the village of Hope-deferred, and near it goes the river of the Shadow of Suicide.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Baudelaire : Petits poemes en prose
'And yet I am going to send you a book that was written altogether in the spirit of that place. I send it however, because it is just one of those specimens of consummate polished perfection in that style, that I think you would do best to read at present: I mean Baudelaire?s "Petits Poemes". On second thoughts, I will not send it until I hear from you, in case you have it already. If you have it not, I shall send you mine, it has unfortunately been subjected to the outrages of an amateur expurgator, but the most of it is there, and I think you would do well to study it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Virgil : The Aeneid, Books III and probably V
'Is it the third or the fifth book of Virgil you so much liked; I have taken to reading the third.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.
'I tried to read Tennyson?s Ode on the Dook of Wellington (which is the finest lyrical poem in the language in case you don?t know) aloud this morning, and I had a hand at my throat tightening steadily as I read, until I could articulate no more and had to throw the book away. That is one of the experiences in life worth having; so were the Elgin Marbles.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll : The Reign of Law
'I somehow could not think the gulph so impassable and read him some notes on the Duke of Argyll.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Heinrich Heine : Die Heimkehr. XXXIX Buch der Lieder
[Transcription] 'Das Herz ist mir bedruckt und sehnlich Gedenke ich der alten Zeit; Die Welt war damals noch so wohnlich Und ruhig lebten hin die Leut. Doch jetzt ist alles wie verschoben Das ist ein Drongen eine Noth; Gestroben ist der herr Gott oben Und unten ist der Teufel todt. Und Alles schaut so gramlich trube, So krausvervirrt und morsch und kalt.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henry Hallam : Constitutional History of England [?]
'I have been out reading Hallam in the garden ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
John Morley : The Struggle for National Education
'I have read Morley's second article on Education today'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Walt Whitman : Leaves of Grass
'Last night, after reading Walt Whitman a long while for my attempt to write about him, I got the tete-montee, rushed out up to Magnus Simpson, came in, took out Leaves of Grass, and without giving the poor unbeliever time to object, proceeded to wade into him with favourite passages.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
John Lord Campbell : Lives of the Lord Chancellors etc
'I have meditated also a large work, on the Plan of ... Campbell's Chancellors ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Gustave Flaubert : La Tentation de Saint Antoine.
'I find I have no time for reading except times of fatigue when I wish merely to refresh myself. O − and I read over again for this purpose − Flaubert?s "Tentation de Saint Antoine":it struck me a good deal at first, but this second time it has fetched me immensely; I am but just done with it, so you will know the large proportion of salt to take with my present statement that it?s the finest thing I ever read! Of course, it isn?t that, it?s full of [italics] longueurs [end italics], and it is not quite ?red up?, as we say in Scotland, not quite articulate, but there are splendid things in it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Wodrow : Analecta
'... but I suppressed it at once and kept on at Wodrow's Analecta (a Covenanting book) and made my notes as best I could.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Michael Bruce : Ode to the Cuckoo
'The authorship of these beautiful verses has been most truculently fought about; but whoever wrote them (and it seems as if this Logan had) they are lovely. What time the pea puts on the bloom Though fliest the vocal vale, An annual guest, in other lands Another spring to hail. Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, The sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year. O could I fly, I'd fly with thee! We'd make on joyful wing Our annual visit o'er the globe, Companions of the spring.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne : Les Essais
'I am alone in the house, and so I allowed myself, at dinner, the first light reading I have indulged in since my return in the shape of some Montaigne.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne : Les Essais, Livre III, Ch XII, De la physionomie
'As Montaigne says, talking of something quite different:"Pour se laisser tomber a plomb, et de si haut, il faut que se soit entre les bras d'une affection solide, vigoureuse et fortunee."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Theophile Gautier : Le Capitaine Fracasse
'I have had a day of open air; only a little modified by Le Capitaine Fracasse before the dining room fire.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Theophile Gautier : Emaux et Camees
'It has the same talent as Emaux et Camees and no other.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Philip Gilbert Hamerton (editor) : The Portfolio: An Artistic Periodical
'I had almost as soon have it in the Portfolio, as the Saturday; the P. is so nicely printed and I am gourmet in type.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Bible, O.T., Judges, Chapter 5.
'Today I have been to church which has not improved my temper I must own. The clergyman did his best to make me hate him and I took refuge in that admirable poem, The Song of Deborah and Barak; I should like to make a long scroll of painting (say, to go all round a cornice) illustrative of this jolly poem; with the people seen in the distance going stealthily on footpaths, while the great highways lie vacant; with the archers besetting the draw wells; with the Princes in hiding on the hills among the bleating sheep-flocks; with the overthrow of Sisera, the stars fighting against him in their courses and that ancient river, the river Kishon, sweeping him away in anger; with his mother looking and looking down the long road in the red sunset, and never a banner and never a spear-clump coming into sight, and her women with their white faces round her, ready with lying comfort. To say nothing of the people on white asses.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Bible or possibly prayerbook
Patrice de MacMahon : unknown
'MacMahon's address is pasted up everywhere and political pictures fill the windows.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve : Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous l'Empire
'I have bought Sainte-Beuve's Chateaubriand and am immensely delighted with the critic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : unknown
'Dowson has lent me Clough, which I like a good deal ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Maria Edgeworth : Moral Tales for Young People
'I am reading Miss Edgeworth's Popular Tales for the Young with thorough gusto.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexander Buchan : Handy Book of Meteorology [?]
'Andrews seems very pleasant and we had a fierce forenoon of it over meteorology. He has Bookan (as he calls him)...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
unknown : works on the Reformation
'I must tell you about my way of life, which is regular to a degree. Breakfast 8.30; during breakfast and my smoke afterwards until ten, when I begin work, I read Reformation: from ten, I work until about a quarter to one; from one until two, I lunch and read a book on Schopenhauer or one on Positivism; two to three work, three to six anything; if I am in before six, I read about Japan; six dinner and a pipe with my father and coffee until 7.30; 7.30 to 9.30, work; after that either supper and a pipe at home, or out to Simpson?s or Baxter?s: bed between eleven and twelve.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
: The Scotsman/Edinburgh Courant
'Thanks for the newspapers and for having marked them. Baildon has rather got it; I cannot but feel sympathy with the reviewer.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
: Edinburgh Courant
'I was much surprised at [what] Charteris said of John Stuart Mill. "Seemed to have been kind and benevolent" is used where, for any one else, he would have said '"was" kind and benevolent"; such locutions show a certain bias. But the strange part was his attempt to stultify Mill's position, and almost to pull mouths at him, because he had been singularly faithful in love. All this sounds so unlike what I should have expected from Charteris that I suspect bad reporting.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
unknown : [Japanese picture books]
[After a break in the letter:] 'There I had the wisdom to stop and look over Japanese picture books until lunch time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: BookManuscript: Letter
George Sand : unknown
'I have gone in for a course of George Sand with immense delight and good results to health, sprits and poor bemuddled brains.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : Francois le Champi
'Read, please read, Francois le Champi by George Sand; it is like a dream of goodness and virtue and gentle heroism.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : La Petite Fadette
'I have the whole of her novels before me. Even La Petite Fadette, for as long as it was in the house, I had not read.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: newspapers
'Disraeli's, Tulloch's and Greyfriars' addresses were all three excellent; Disraeli's brilliant.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
Robert Louis Stevenson : unknown "Tale"
'Piano again disentangled; and some hope, not for it only, but for the tale. I have read it to my mother, who thought it was the only one of mine she had ever heard, that promised any possible success: I have read some of it also to Baxter who was pleased and counselled me to go on with it. I suppose with these two opinions I should feel strengthened.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Seems to refer to one of a set of stories that RLS had at various stages of planning and completion, see Letter 329.
Charles Baudelaire : Petits Poemes en Prose
'[?] I could not [?] pay the postage for the book. [?] The book, you will receive shortly. Do not run away with the idea that I think it specially commendable. Only I think he might be suitable at this moment for you. Note the following. III, VI, XIII, XIV (O admirable), XVII, XVIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII, XXXVII. Some of these are really very excellent; and (it was that paper of yours that made me think of the book) will show you I think how you must approach such slight and essentially exotic ideas in prose, and yet retain for them some of the immunities that go with verse.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Katharine de Mattos : unknown
'[?] it was that paper of yours that made me think of the book[Baudelaire's "Petits Poemes en Prose"]' (see RED ID18015)
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Referred to here by RLS as "that paper of yours".
Robert Louis Stevenson : Desiderata
'I have found what should interest you dear. A paper in which I had sketched out my life, before I knew you. Here is the exact copy even to spelling.[?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet
Edgar Allan Poe : To One in Paradise (1834)
'Is not this verse pretty? Thou wast that all [sic] to me, love, For which my soul did pine -- A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : King Pest: A Tale Containing An Allegory.
'I have made myself so ill with a story of Poe?s − ?King Pest?, by name. I did not sleep last night and I have scarcely been able to eat today.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night's Dream.
'As soon as I have done, I shall begin my ?Pastoral Drama? business; I have so many nice things to say about "Midsummer Night?s Dream"[?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Sidney Colvin : Review of Basil Champneys' book A Quiet Corner of England.
'Colvin?s article on B.C. was so much better than I had expected; he had the courage (which I lacked) to find fault; if I had dared to do so, I might have praised much more.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
unknown : Various unspecified books concerning John Knox.
'[?] though I can do no original work, I get forward making notes for my ?Knox? at a good trot.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and/or Wanderjahre
'No skating scene in "Wilhelm Meister" whatsandever that [italics]I[end italics] can find, or hear of.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edgar Allan Poe : To my Mother.
'This is E. A. Poe: Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of "Mother," Therefore by that dear name I long have called you- You who are [italics]more than mother unto me, And fill my heart of hearts.[end italics] [?]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Rene-Francois-Armand Sully-Prudhomme : unknown poetry
'Then again, I have nice books to read. The new French poets. Prudhomme is adorable − I shall have a lot of Sully Prudhomme to read when I come to you. Soulary better perhaps − better certainly, [italics]comme forme[end italics], but so unsympathetic when compared to Prudhomme in character and thought. Prudhomme is a [italics]good[end italics] man. Fancy! And a modern French poet! Wonders after that will never cease.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Soulary : unknown
'Do you know Soulary and Sully-Prudhomme? Such birds, both of them: Soulary a really consummate artist, More akin to Rosetti than anyone else in English: Sully-Prudhomme , [italics] a good man[end italics] and a very pretty poet, somewhat after the fashion of Longfellow, with plaintive passages that haunt one?s mind and sentiments that one can share.I clapped my hands, when I found the reign of scarlet corruption at an end, and a new generation arisen that did not remember Gautier. Here are men whom everything interests; men with red blood (not quintessential absinthe and vitriol), and a strong social passion in them. I am so anxious to write about them. I offered Appleton a series of papers on the modern French school − the Parnassiens, I think they call them − de Banville, Coppee Grammont) I think that?s his name), Soulary and Sully-Prudhomme. But he has not deigned to answer my letter − God?s blood if I had my hand on his weasel!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : [unknown verses]
'Well, I was at the annual dinner of my old Academy schoolfellows last night. We sat down ten, out of seventy-two.[?] I read them some verses. It is great fun: I always read verses, and in the vinous enthusiasm of the moment they always propose to have them printed; [italics]ce qui n?arrive jamais, du reste[end italics]: in the morning, they are more calm.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Probably sheets of paper or pages from a notebook.
George Sand : Mademoiselle Merquem
'Have you read Mademoiselle Merquem? I have just finished it ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Herbert Spenser : Principles of Biology
'It [a child relative?s speculations about the nature of fairies] was a good deal in the vein of Herbert Spencer?s description of the primitive man, all this.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Anne Isabella Thackeray : The Village on the Cliff. A Novel.
'I am reading "The Village on the Cliff", and cannot tell you how beautiful I think it. I am inclined to give up literature. [italics]I[end italics] can?t write like that. Never mind, [italics]je serai fidele [end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson : John Knox and the Controversy about Female Rule
'I have been working all the morning at my second ?John Knox? proof, and got it pretty right, I fancy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Proof copy of RLS's essay.
Robert Louis Stevenson : An Autumn Effect.
'I have also got ?An Autumn Effect? in proof: I shall send it to you to read, I think.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Proof copy of RLS's essay.
Sidney Colvin : [Notices on Titian and Daniel Maclise]
'I say Colvin, your Titian is no end, and has pleased my mother as much as me: no end, also, is your description of that incarnate devil Maclise one of the wickedest incarnations of the spirit of (artistic) unnatural crime that ever lived.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Louis Stevenson : A Country Dance
'And now I have taken up an old story, begun years ago; and I have now rewritten all I had written of it then and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple writing, of course I am in another world now; but in some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to heart. I have got a jolly new name for my old story. I am going to call it ?A Country Dance?: the two heroes keep changing places, you know; and the chapter, where the most of this changing goes on, is to be called: ?Up the Middle, down the Middle?. It will be in six, or (perhaps) seven, chapters. I have never worked harder in my life, than these last four days. If I can only keep it up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Earlier draft of one of his stories.
William Ernest Henley : unknown
'My poet writes good stuff; it is slack still and unequal, but I think some of it capital.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
William Ernest Henley : [poems]
'I have a poet in stock here, a poor ass in the infirmary with one leg off and the other more than shaky − scrofula you know − but [italics]bougrement[end italics] intelligent, and he writes straight enough verses, I think. He?s learning, you know. But he makes good songs [and] here and there has a good idea. His hospital sonnets are very true and boldly real − not realistic, a word I have now learned to hate.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre Veron : Le Pantheon de Poche
'There is only one very good thing in the world: the acting of Sarah Bernhardt. I beg your pardon, there is another: Pierre Veron’s "Pantheon de Poche".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Jean Racine : unknown
'I have been reading John Racine: it is very standard − damnd[sic] standard, I beg your pardon.[…] I like John Racine, however; the noise is very pleasing and as unintelligent and soothing as a mill wheel; occasionally too there are verses of a dignity! − Verses with Versailles wigs − pageant verses − like a Roman Triumph.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Jules Michelet : French Revolution
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Samuel Taylor Coleridge : Kubla Khan
'... some verses which I wrote turn out, on inspection, to be not quite equal to "Kubla Khan".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walt Whitman : Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
'However I forgave him, and read him that bit of Walt Whitman about the widowed bird, which I thank God affected him quite tolerably.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night, Or What You Will.
'I am to act Orsino (the Duke) in "Twelfth Night" at the Jenkins’. I could not resist that; it is such a delightful part; and I got them to put off my rehearsals to the last moment, so that I may get a fortnight with you in London and a fortnight with Bob in France: for that must be done this time, [italics]couteque coute [end italics]. I am not altogether satisfied that I shall do Orsino [italics]comme il faut[end italics]; but the Jenkins are pleased, and that is the great affair.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg : Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche
Look here, you had better get hold of G.C. Lichtenberg’s "Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche": Gottingen, 1794 to 1816 (it was published in numbers seemingly. Douglas the publisher lent it to me: and tho’ I hate the damned tongue too cordially to do more than dip into it, I have seen some shrewd things. If you cannot get it for yourself, (it seems scarce), I daresay I could negotiate with Douglas for a loan.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Jules Michelet : French Revolution/Histoire de la Revolution francaise
'I am reading Michelet's French Revolution with much interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas McCrie : Life of John Knox
'I am nearly done with McCrie's Knox.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Woodstock
'Colvin has brought home Woodstock from Nice and we have started reading it aloud, which is a huge institution.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Stevenson : 'British Storms' in Good Words
'I should like, by the way, to hear more about my father's lecture; was it much on the same rails as the Good Words article?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Fortnightly Review
'... and then nearly fell asleep over the Fortnightly. Morley is very jolly; so is Marat.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Jean Baptise Honore Raymond Capefigue : Histoire de la Reforme, de la Ligue, et du Regne de Henri IV
'Imagine my delight to find a footnote in Capefigs thus conceived ... Immediately after, Capefigues talks of la grande flotte de Dracke.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : unknown
'I cannot tell how I feel, who can ever? I feel like a person in a novel of George Sand’s; I feel a desire to go out of the house, and begin life anew in the cool blue night. Never to come back here; never, never. Only to go on forever by sunny day and gray day, by bright night and foul, by highway and byway, town and hamlet, until somewhere by a roadside or in some clean inn, clean death opened his arms to me, and took me to his quiet heart forever.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Hospital Outlines: Sketches and Portraits
'My dear Henley, Sketches III line 11. More laughter comes from them than moan. IV As a whole. VII Both quatrains. VIII line 2. Extemporising a becoming gloom. IX Well, I don’t like it. Portraits I The sestett[sic] is not up to the mark, I think, but I don’t press this. IV Is a little broken, and the phrasing is a little imbecile. VII I don’t like. IX The first quatrain, and the words "does not feel his place" in the second. There is positively all I find….'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Probably proof.
unknown : law books
'I am all right. I am reading law, and writing beautiful poems in prose. […]Do write, son of perdition, do write. I cannot, owing to poetical (prose poetical) afflatus, Civil Law, and a kind of nondescript incapacity that weighs upon me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Textbooks on Scottish Law, including Civil Law.
William Penn : Fruits of Solitude
[On blank recto flyleaf at the beginning of the volume:] 'My Dear Brown,/ Here it is, with the mark of a San Francisco BOUQUINISTE. And if ever in all my "human conduct" I have done a better thing to any fellow-creature than handing on to you this sweet, dignified, and wholesome book, I know I shall hear of it on the last day. To write a book like this were impossible; at least one can hand it on − with a wrench − one to another. My wife cries out and my own heart misgives me, but still here it is. I could scarcely better prove myself − Yours affectionately, R.L. Stevenson. [Later, placed on a blank recto page facing p.166, i.e. the last page of Fruits of Solitude and before Fruits of a Father’s Love:] My Dear Brown, / I hope if you get this far, you will know what an invaluable present I have made you. Even the copy was dear to me, printed in the colony that Penn established and carried in my pocket all about San Francisco streets, read in street cars and ferry boats, when I was sick unto death, and found in all times a peaceful and sweet companion. But I hope, when you shall have reached this note, my gift will not have been in vain; for while just now we are so busy and intelligent, there is not the man living, no, nor recently dead, that could have put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words. / R.L.S.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Sand : Nanon
'I have finished Nanon...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Kingdom Clifford : The Unseen Universe or Physical Speculations on a Future State
'My father has been quite sewed up for some days back, by Clifford’s article: (a fine article it was too);[…].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Review article. Probably read in print after publication, but possibly in another earlier form since RLS was acquainted with its author.
John Hay Athole Macdonald : election speech
'I read J. H. A. Macdonald's speech with interest.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Thomas Stevenson : letter (in "Nature")
'I have been reading a paper of my father's in Nature.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Sidney Colvin : Letter
'The gay and free S.C. has at last written to me; but has not pleased me: does he think I can do anything with my “Spring-time”, that’s what I want to know.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Robert Lewins : unknown
'I met a rum old army doctor, called Lewins, who sent me a paper of his, full of matter that would not be very gratifying to the elect: In which paper he has the following: "Healthy sensation .. is thus our only Heaven: morbid sensation, varying as it does from ennui or general malaise to mental and corporeal agony and anguish, our only Hell".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
William Shakespeare : Henry V
[Signature] R.L.H. Stevenson 'You don’t know what H. means, ha? I have been reading Nym; and that’s the humour of it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley novels
'I am still ... doing a pleasanter spell of work over the Waverley novels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Fortunes fo Nigel
'I have read one after another ... The Fortunes of Nigel.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Waverley
'Waverley is so poor and dull.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Victor Hugo : various romances
#Last night I set to work and Bob wrote to my dictation three or four pages of "V. Hugo's Romances" ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
unknown : [law books]
'I have been reading such lots of law, and it seems to take away the power of writing from me. From morning to night, so often as I have a spare moment, I am in the embraces of a law book: barren embraces.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Law books in the plural.
Sidney Colvin : Frederick Walker. In Memoriam.
'I say, how nice S.C.’s ‘Walker’ is.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Given the date of the letter, RLS may have read the article in proof.
Anon [Apprently the father of the dead child] : [memorial on grave]
'[…] I’ve been to church and am not depressed − a great step. I was at that beautiful church my P.P.P.[Petit Poeme en Prose] was about. It is a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string course to match, and a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old gravestones; one of a Frenchman from Dunquerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by. And one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw: a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father’s own hand.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Inscription carved on school slate.
William Ernest Henley : Notes on the Firth
'Will you allow me to recommend you the accompanying sonnets? They are by Mr Henley, who wrote the “Hospital Outlines” in this month’s "Cornhill" − poems which have made a great sensation here, where the portraits are easily recognized; and though these have not the same extrinsic interest, they seem to me better as workmanship and more agreeable altogether. Henley is a singularly fine fellow, whose constancy under great trouble is as remarkable as his verse. Let me add that he is not the richest person in the world, so (should these sonnets suit you for the magazine) an early publication will be of great service to him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Sheet, Unknown
William Ernest Henley : Hospital Outlines: Sketches and Portraits.
'Will you allow me to recommend you the accompanying sonnets? They are by Mr Henley, who wrote the “Hospital Outlines” in this month’s "Cornhill" − poems which have made a great sensation here, where the portraits are easily recognized; and though these have not the same extrinsic interest, they seem to me better as workmanship and more agreeable altogether. Henley is a singularly fine fellow, whose constancy under great trouble is as remarkable as his verse. Let me add that he is not the richest person in the world, so (should these sonnets suit you for the magazine) an early publication will be of great service to him.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, Probably a proof copy.
Sidney Colvin : annotations
'My dear Colvin, Thanks for your pencilations. One thing only, remains; how am I to call the followers of Orso and Manfredi.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter, annotations
Sidney Colvin : The History of a Pavement
'I say your pavement is d−d jolly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
William Ernest Henley : [second series of] Hospital Poems
'Herewith you receive the rest of Henley’s hospital work. He was much pleased by what you said of him, and asked me to forward these to you for your opinion; the pencil marks are principally Payne’s. One poem at least, the “Spring Sorrow”, which seems to me the most beautiful, I hope you will communicate to Madame. I thank God for this [italics]petit bout de consolation[end italics], that by Henley’s own account, this one more lovely thing in the world is not altogether without some trace of my influence: let me say that I have been something sympathetic which the mother found and contemplated while she yet carried it in her womb. This, in my profound discouragement, is a great thing for me; if I cannot do good work myself, at least, it seems, I can help others better inspired; I am at least a skilful accoucheur.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Louis Stevenson : When the Devil Was Well.
'My discouragement is from many causes: among others the re-reading of my Italian story. Forgive me, Colvin, but I cannot agree with you; it seems green fruit to me, if not really unwholesome; it is profoundly feeble, damn its weak knees!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown
Pierre-Jean Beranger : unknown
I am very busy with Beranger for the "Britannica".
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
:
'O when we woke in London docks, the first steamer I saw go past was the "Charles", and the next the "Cygnet": I was afraid to look any more, I felt so eerie; but of course I [italics]know[end italics] the third was the "Baxter".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter, Painted (or stencilled?) on ships' sides.
Gustave Aimard : unidentified novels
'I have just made my will and am reading Aimard's novels.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Philip Gilbert Hamerton : Art Essays
'I find here (of all places in the world) your Essays on Art, which I have read with signal interest.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edmund Gosse : New Poems
'My dear Weg, I received your book last night ... You know what a wooden hearted curmudgeon I am about contemporary verse .. Hence you will be kind enough to take this from me in a kindly spirit ... "To my daughter" is delicious.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
George Bancroft : History of the United States of America from the Discovery of the American Continent
'Bancroft's History of the United States, even in a centenary edition, is essentially heavy fare ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : [article on Montaigne]
'From time to time, Lang writes charming articles in the "Daily News": witness one, a week or so past, on Montaigne: it was a little gem.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
Thomas Carlyle : Essay on Burns
'The best trumpet that I can suggest is to read Thomas Carlyle’s Essay on Burns. Sick as I am of reading anything in which so much as Burns’s name appears, I was really electrified (beg pardon for such a "Daily Telegraphism") by this. It is full of very fine criticism, expressed here and there in rather an old-fashioned academical style, full of beautiful humanity − see the noble passage about Burns having refused money for his songs − and full of wonderful wisdom. The whole conclusion is indeed admirable; as where he says that all fame, riches, fortune of all sorts is to true peace no more than “mounting to the house top to reach the stars”; and again about Byron: “the fire that was in him, was the mad fire of a volcano; and now we look sadly into the ashes of a crater which erelong[sic] will fill itself with snow.”. I subscribe to that essay. My own is quite unnecessary. Do read it; it will do you good; it would do the dead good. It has reminded me once again of the great mistake of my life − and of everybody else’s; that we are all trying to gain the whole world if you will, except what alone is worth keeping; our own soul. God bless T.Carlyle, say I. […] Read that essay, it is in volume two, […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: The Spectator
'By the way, I have tried to read the Spectator, which they all say I imitate, and - it's very wrong of me I know - but I can't'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Sidney Colvin : 'Art and Criticism' in Appleton's Journal
[I have seen] 'Your "Art and Criticism", likewise there'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail : Les Exploits de Rocambole
'When last observed, he was studying with apparent zest the exploits of one Rocambole by the late Viscount Ponson of Terrail.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Joseph Mery : Monsieur Auguste
'I have read M. Auguste.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Joseph Mery : Un crime inconnu
'I have read M. Auguste and the Crime Inconnu, being now abonne to a library.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Joseph Mery : Les Damnes de Java
'The Damned Ones of the Hindies now occupy my attention.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Various : [Texts by or about 15th-century French literary and historical figures]
'I have fallen in love with the Charles of Orleans period and cannot get enough of it. I see six essays at least, on single characters: Charles, Rene of Anjou, Jacques Coeur, Villon, Louis XI, Joan of Arc. Would not that be a jolly book? I do not propose to write any of them just now; but study the period quietly. It suits me better than the Reformation , because − well, because it’s more romantic to begin with, and again because it is more manageable − not such a monstrous large order.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Probably books and articles.
Sidney Colvin : At the Land's End of France.
'The Brittany game is simply “on it”. There are no two ways of that. [ref.to Note 1] Look here, my young and lovely friend, if you overwork like that, your numskull will cave in again.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodicalManuscript: Letter
Robert Burns : unknown
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Allan Ramsay : The Gentle Shepherd
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay on Burns in ten columns.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Robert Fergusson : Poems
'No − my “Burns” is not done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it ; every time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild goose) starts up and away I go. And then again, to be plain, I shirk the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It is awful to have to express and differentiate Burns, in a column or two. All the more as I’m going to write a book about it. "Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns: an Essay" (or "A Critical Essay" but then I’m going to give lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the criticism) “by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate, MS., P.P.C., etc.” How’s that for cut and dry? And I [italics]could[end italics] write that book. Unless I deceive myself in a superior style, I could write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and knew the game thoroughly'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
James Boswell : Life of Samuel Johnson.
'I idle finely. I read Boswell’s "Life of Johnson"[…]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Henri Martin : History of France
'I read […] Martin’s "History of France"[…]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Allan Ramsay : unknown
'I read […] Allan Ramsay […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Olivier Basselin : A Son Nez
'I read […] Olivier Basselin […] "On dit qu’il nuit aux yeux; mais seront-ils les maistres? Le vin est guarison De mes maux; J’aime mieux perdre les deux fenestres Que toute la maison" (That’s O. Basselin; [italics]c’est assez choite, n’est-ce pas?[end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
James Walter Ferrier : Forrester
'Many thanks for your letter and the instalment of Forrester which accompanied it, and which I read with amusement and pleasure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Lope de Vega : unknown
'The family is all very shaky in health but our motto is now "Al Monte!" in the words of Don Lope, in the play the sister and I are just beating through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
unknown : material about Burns
'I read […] all sorts of rubbish a proposof Burns […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Philippe de Commines : Memoires
'I read […] Comines […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Jean Juvenal des Ursins : unknown
'I read […] Juvenal des Ursins, etc. [….]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
William Dean Howells : Undoscovered Country
'I believe I have not written to you since I saw the end of the Undiscovered Country.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
John Hill Burton : History of the Reign of Queen Anne
'An old idea, first started while I was reading your history of Scotland, has just been revived over your Queen Anne, which I am in the heart of, with sincere pleasure.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Hugh Clough : Amours de Voyage
'I was pleased to see your quotation from Clough. I used it myself in an approximate form, and with doubtful attribution to C., in another article ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Edward Bruce Hamley : Operations of War
'Gen. Robertson called and presented me with Hamley's Operations of War in which I am now drowned a thousand fathoms deep.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquess of Lorne : Guido and Lita: A Tale of the Riviera.
'Figure to yourself, I wrote a review of Lord Lorne for "Vanity Fair" − a few pages of scurrility that I wrote laughing in an hour or two − and I got − guess! − I got five pounds for it and the price of the book! That was jolly, wasn’t it? Long live "Vanity Fair"!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Robert Browning : The Inn Album
'I have done rather an amusing paragraph or two for "Vanity Fair" on the "Inn Album". I have slated R.B. pretty handsomely.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Theodore William Alois Buckley : unknown
'It is truly not for nothing that I have read my Buckley.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
David Stewart of Garth : Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlands of Sctland, with Details of the Military Service of the Highland Regiments
'Since my books have come I have read every day ... 100 or thereby pp of Stewart's Highland Regiments.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Thomas Stevenson : Lighthouse Construction and Illumination
'I cannot think how I omitted to tell you that I was pleased extremely with the dedication; it seemed to me and Fanny quite right and, if you understand, not too literary for an engineer. I did not want to change a word.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Unknown, possibly proof copy
various : [works on the fifteenth century]
'[…] I keep reading XVth Century […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Unknown
Leslie Stephen : Hours in a Library, No. XII. − Macaulay
Read Stephen’s “Macaulay”.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Andrew Lang : French Peasant Songs.
'Lang’s French ballads is neatly enough ticked off.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Sidney Colvin : ‘A Greek Hymn’.
'Here I am, here. And very well too. And I read your hymn, which is a very good hymn. And I was delighted with how you patted Pater on the back and promised him some cake if he kept a good little boy till the holidays.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Wodrow : The Correspondence of the Rev Robert Wodrow
'I have read one half (about 900 pages) of Wodrow's Correspondence, with some improvement but great fatigue.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Leslie Stephen : 'George Eliot' in Cornhill Magazine
'Read Stephen's admirable, arch-admirable, 'George Eliot', in that Cornhill.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Fortnightly Review
'By Swinburne's conversion, I meant no reference to his divagations about 'Rizpah', which I did not honour with perusal, but to other matter in that article which I shall not mention now, since you had not nous enough to twig its significance for yourself.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Thomas Carlyle : Reminiscences
'You are right about that adorable book; F. and I are in a world, not ours; but pardon me, as far as sending on goes, we take another view; the first vol. a la bonne heure! but not - never - the second.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: Illustrated London News
'In "Illustrated London News" and "Graphic", both for August 12th, are notices of ”Virginibus Puerique”. In the latter I am once more taken for my editor! I think I have pleased the public this time!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: The Academy: A Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science and Art
'I have just seen the Academy of April 9.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Edmund Gosse : 'Timasetheos' in The Cornhill Magazine
'Your last poem in the Cornhill was first class.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
John Addington Symonds : unknown
'The other day I borrowed a volume of Symonds's poems from himself and returned it to him without a word of comment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edmund Gosse : English Odes
'I have just been reading your Odes; a lovely little book.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Fortune Hippolyte Auguste Castille (Boisgobey) : L'Equipage du Diable (Equipage of the Devil)
'Fortune has written another book, the Equipage of the Devil, which is fully worse than words can describe.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Camille Debans : Le Baron Jean (Baron John)
'Debans, the Dead Man's Shoes fellow has also disgraced himself in a work entitled Baron John.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Gustave Flaubert : Bouvard et Pecuchet
'Symonds has gone off to Italy with your Bouvard et Pecuchet, a most loathsome work.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
A J Butler : Review in Athenaeum
'Who did the Athenaeum I know not, but it is very kind.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Revised Version of New Testament
'The swollen, childish and pedantic vanity that moved the said revisers to put 'bring' for 'lead', is a sort of literary fault that calls for an eternal hell ..'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Andrew Lang : The Library
'Lang's Library is very pleasant reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Charles Grant Robertson : Kurum, Kabul and Kandahar: being a Brief Record of Impressions in Three Campaigns under General Roberts
'I have not finished re-reading your book, so I cannot say whether all is improved; but much is.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Antiquary
'These brave words of Scott remind me of the song in The Antiquary, which I have just re-read ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Walter Scott : Ivanhoe
'The two middle verses of that song have haunted me ever since I was a child and used to go up into the dark drawing-room with a little wax taper in my hand ... a white towel over my head, intoning the dirge from Ivanhoe ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : Athenaeum, 'The Poetry of Byron'
'I like your "Byron" well ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
William Ernest Henley : Cornhill Magazine 'Hector Berlioz: a Biography'
'I liked your ... "Berlioz" better.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Johnson : A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
'A thousand thanks for Johnson who is a brick.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: The Graphic
'In "Illustrated London News" and "Graphic", both for August 12th, are notices of ”Virginibus Puerisque”. In the latter I am once more taken for my editor! I think I have pleased the public this time!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
Frederick Marryat : The Pirate
'Don't read noble old Fred's Pirate anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
N. A. : 'Young Rob Roy' in Stirling Observer
'In reference to 'N.A.'s' notes on young Rob Roy, I should like to ask the writer if he will kindly inform us what authority he has for understanding so much in his notes.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
anon : Review article; and 'Husbands and Wives'.
'Look here, my fame is even more complete than I had dreamed of. Get the "Spectators" for August 5th and 12th; and you will see how the poor Spectatorists were puzzled and ("Scottice") affronted at my paper. It is charming.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
: Le Courant
'I have found […] a "Courant" which was speedily dismembered and has been read eagerly down to the Theatre Advertisements.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Newspaper
Sydney Colvin : Review of George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda"
'Your "Daniel Deronda" is uncommonly jolly, and right. I don’t know that you’ve ever written anything which pleased me so much. You might have pitched it stronger about the time D.D. chose for proposing; it was simple caddish.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Charles Baxter : letter
'This [i.e. letter] had been lying a long while. I must send it off in proof I didn’t quite forget you. I saw yours to the Baronick, and was surprised at one piece of intelligence therein. Mine are always married before I begin, which simplifies things.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Robert Glasgow Brown : letter
'You are quite right, according to me, in being dissatisfied with my work; but not right at all in expressing your dissatisfaction as you did. I have never written rudely to you. Although hastily and curtly without doubt; and so you have no possible excuse for writing rudely to me. I shall give you the Feuilleton as far as I can without personal inconvenience. As for reading three volumes and writing an article in two days, I shall make an attempt this once without promising success; but I must ask you not to put me again in the same position […] As to the Whispering Gallery, it is only right to point out that one of your stories was in the "World" a month ago and in the "Queen" the week after.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Auguste Maquet : Les Feuilles Vertes
'Rondeau On reading a work by M. Auguste Maquet entitled Les Vertes Feuilles. See, "The Green Leaves", I leave them here uncut, − Drop them, recoiling, at the first debut − Lay down the book and with superb disdain, Smiling but sold, go on my way again Through life’s green vale, remarking simply “Zut!” Devoid of style, of fable and of smut, How, how, shall I portray its dullness? − Tut! See for yourself − see, whelmed in grief and pain, − See "The Green Leaves"! Thus one, sweet-toothed, yet of a tender gut, Who sees before him many peaches put In some tall cafe by the shores of Seine, Schools his bold heart to choose and to refrain: The ripe he eats with gluttonous ardour − but, See, the green leaves!'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Giovanni Pontano : Pontani Opera, 'Hendecasyllaborum, Liber Primus' xx
'Symonds has lent me Pontanus ... You can twig the argument; he is delicious.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone
The seventeen-year-old Robert Louis Stevenson, when he read the novel that year, wrote to his mother: “Isn’t the detective prime?”
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
Frederic Andre : letter
'Translation enclosed, very literal, for the fun’s sake. I have taken stock/made acquaintance of the ["Treatise of Marine Works" which you have published in 1874 […] Kindly accept, Mister and dear colleague, the expression of my sentiments of perfect estime. (signed) Fred Andre'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Walter Villiers : Sir Claude the Conqueror (in Young Folks)
'See No. 571, last page; an article, called Sir Claude the Conqueror ... The story in question, by the by, was a last chance given to its drunken author; not Villiers - that was a nom de plume - but Viles, brother to my old boyhood's guide, philosopher and friend, Edward Viles ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Will. J. Sharman : article in Young Folks
'Observe in the same number, how Will. J. Sharman girds at your poor friend ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Bracebridge Hemyng : Bondage of Brandon
'Talking of which, in Heaven's name, get the Bondage of Brandon (3 vols) by Bracebridge Hemming.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Oscar Wilde : letter to Sidney Colvin
'We have just had Oscar Wilde's incredible letter to Colvin and have roared over it ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
Oscar Wilde : Poems
'We have just had Oscar Wilde's incredible letter ... I read his poems and found, with disappointment, they were not even improper.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
William Ernest Henley : review of Vol 3 Letters of Charles Dickens in Athenaeum
'I had already spotted your Dickens; very pleasant and true.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
William Morris : translation of The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
'Morris's Sigurd is a grrrrreat poem; that is so.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Sidney Colvin : "Giotto's Gospel of Labour"
'I read your “Giotto”; it’s almighty well written, I don’t know how the devil you can write like that.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Sidney Colvin : "The Grosvenor Gallery"
'I read your “Grosvenor”; I’ve seen more interesting articles of yours (beg parding!); but it seemed to me very nice in tone, and I think all the fellows should be pleased, except perhaps poor Tissot. I can’t think anything “debased and odious” that has such a nice light and air about it, as anything of his I ever saw; that seems to me to be an ideal after a fashion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Arthur Patchett Martin : Sweet Girl Graduate: A Christmas Story and Random Rhymes
It would not be very easy for me to give you any idea of the pleasure I found in your present….I can assure you, your little book, coming from so far, gave me all the pleasure and encouragement in the world...' [Note 1]Martin read RLS’s essay ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ in "Cornhill" for August 1876 and wrote to him expressing his pleasure.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Peter Christen Asbjorsen : Round the Yule Log
'Thank you for your beautiful book, which I admired with my eyes and then read with great amusement.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Sidney Colvin : Landor
'... and I agree with you I could choose no better model than Colvin's admirable Landor.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Samuel Richardson : Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady.
'I am reading "Clarissa Harlowe" with all the pleasure in the world…It is the cleverest book in some ways that can be imagined; and deals with so many absorbing problems from different points of view….'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederick James Furnivall : Review in The Academy
'I knew I had forgot something: Furnivall is too free; it is permitted to be insolent, but not to be so strangely dull.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Robert Browning : Sordello
'As for Sordello, I read it four times in youth, and never could make out who was speaking; yet I liked it - as one likes the moon, I fancy'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Unknown
William Ernest Henley : 'A Note on Japanese Art' in Magazine of Art
'The Mag has come; the only thing I liked was your Japanese.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
John Bunyan : Pilgrim's Progress
'Why the hell did you or your printers - a lousy lot whom I abominate - pass over a correction of mine and send me sprawling down to posterity as an ignoramus who thought the Ill-Favoured Ones were in the first part; when I was nine years old, I knew better than that. Christian never saw 'em; they were people who attacked women, a point really felt by Miss Bagster, God bless her old heart.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Jean-Pierre Lanfry : Histoire de Napoleon 1er
'O boy, I'm deep in Lanfry.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald : Life of George IV
'His Majesty, once more disobeying the Dook's orders, had granted to some creature an Irish peerage. 'I observe' wrote Arthur (I quote from memory), that your Majesty has been misinformed. I shall reserve the patent until I have an opportunity of learning your Majesty's pleasure upon it!!' O the groans of George, who knew his man, and whimpered under the rod.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Alexander Ireland : List of the writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt : chronologically arranged with notes, descriptive, critical, and explanatory; and a selection of opinions regarding their genius and characteristics, by distinguished contemporaries and friends as we
'I have your List of Writings etc: a copy of it was lent to me by Mr Bain the bookseller.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
:
'The elections are coming on, and Paris is full of the strangest manifestoes from this or the other candidate. Some − mostly the Republicans − simply state their name, and that they have been one of the majority turned out by the Marshal. The others, the so-called Conservatives − have a big poster of statements here and there, backwards and forwards, some of them about the the Marshal’s policy. It is altogether a curious spectacle for an Englishman [...]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Broadsheet, Handbill, Newspaper, Poster
By or on behalf of Edme-Patrice-Maurice MacMahon : [political manifesto]
'Sunday morning, as I was out getting chocolate, I found two new manifestoes on the walls. One from a private person, editor of a Radical journal, calling on the people to be calm, and rest on the weight of their majority. The other, a declaration of the President’s, which made me so mad that I could have broken his head if he had been within my reach. It was written, I firmly believe, with the intention of driving on the Republicans to extremities, and shook the cat in the air with a sort of paternal menace, that must have been maddening to the Opposition.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster, election posters.
Thomas Stevenson : Christianity Confirmed by Jewish and Heathen Testimony and the Deductions from Physical Science
'I received my father’s pamphlet and read it with great pleasure. I shall try and write of it more at large to himself.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
William Ernest Henley : 'The Omadhaun at the Queen's'.
'"The Omadhaun" was very funny by the Lord; I saw Constable who said both Payn and Kegan Paul had very highly lauded you.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical, Account of an Irish melodrama by H.P. Grattan.
Arthur Patchett Martin : Bret Harte in Relation to Modern Fiction.
'I wish I could lay my hands on the numbers of the "Review", for I know I wished to say something on that head more particularly than I can from memory; […] I was very much pleased with the article on Bret Harte; it seemed to me just, clear, and to the point.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
Catherine Spence :
'I agreed pretty well with all you said about George Eliot […]'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Serial / periodical
George Eliot : Daniel Deronda
'Did you − I forget − did you have a kick at the stern works of that melancholy puppy and humbug Daniel Deronda himself? − the Prince of Prigs: the literary abomination of Desolation in the way of manhood: a type which is enough to make a man forswear the love of women, if that is how it must be gained….'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Arthur Patchett Martin : 'Noll and Nell'; 'England - 1877'.
'Of your poems I have myself a kindness for ‘Noll and Nell’. Although I don’t think you have made it as good as you ought: verse five is surely not [italics]quite melodious[end italics]. I confess I like the Sonnet in the last number of the "Review"− the ‘Sonnet to England’.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book, Serial / periodical, Both (2 poems, one in a book, one in a periodical).
Samuel Richardson : Clarissa: or The History of a Young Lady.
'Please, if you have not, and I don’t suppose you have, already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of books − [italics]Clarissa Harlowe[end italics]. For any man who takes an interest in the problem of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel. Miss Howe and Lovelace, words cannot tell how good they are! And the scene where Clarissa beards her family, with her fan going all the while; and some of the quarrel scenes between her and Lovelace; and the scene where Colonel Marsden goes to Mr Hall, with Lord M. trying to compose matters, and the Colonel with his eternal "finest woman in the world", and the inimitable affirmation of Mowbray − nothing could be better! You will bless me when you read it for this recommendation; but, indeed, I can do nothing but recommend [italics]Clarissa[end italics].'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Edmé-Patrice-Maurice MacMahon, comte de :
'I was in Paris during the elections for the Chamber, when a triumphant majority was returned, as of course you know, against the very bad, or very stupid, or else both, person, Marshal MacMahon. It was an interesting time, you may imagine. On the morning of the elections, a manifesto of the President’s came out. I was living at the time in what we call Bohemian style, buying and cooking my own food, and had occasion to go out early for some chocolate. When I read the proclamation, which was on all the walls, I could have beaten MacMahon with my cane. It was a scandalous attempt to insult the poor people and so drive them to the barricades; if that was not the intention of the document, it was either written by a man out of his mind, or I do not know the meaning of words when I see them. They disappointed him for one while; but how it is all to end, who can foresee?'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Poster
Thomas Stevenson :
'I read the preface once a day about, tell Nestor so much.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson
Margaret Isabella Stevenson :
'Your last letter was very nice.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
William Ernest Henley :
'At last, son of night, I receive a communication […] Oh no, it is not the penny. It is the one-volume story demanded by Hueffer for the New Tarterly [sic]. It’s a real story, damned fine; but the dénouementdoesn’t please me yet: the beginning is so good, that it is difficult to get up to that pitch again, and the story sort of dies away.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Letter
John Addington Symonds : Animi Figura
'Symonds, talking of cultshaw, has just written a book of sonnets, which I think really should interest and amuse a few of us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Manuscript: Proof copy
: Bible
'Thank you heartily for the Bible, which is exquisite.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : La Lionne
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne ...'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : La Comtesse de Monrion
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne, followed by La Comtesse de Monrion.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
Frederic Soulie : Le Fils de la Folle
'From the toshie Soulie I have unearthed another flawed jewel of energy and drunken Genius: - La Lionne, followed by La Comtesse de Monrion... I have also read a play by him: Le Fils de la Folle.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
: [review of "Inland Voyage" in the "New York Critic"]
'A capital review of Inland Voyage in the New York Critic for June 2nd.'
