R. L. Stevenson

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME :
J. M. SYNGE By P. P. Howe HENRY JAMES By Ford Madox Hueffer HENRIK IBSEN By R. Ellis Roberts THOMAS HARDY By Lascelles Abercrombie BERNARD SHAW By P. P. Howe WALTER PATER By Edward Thomas WALT WHITMAN By Basil de Sélincourt SAMUEL BUTLER By Gilbert Cannan A. C. SWINBURNE By Edward Thomas GEORGE GISSING By Frank Swinnerton RUDYARD KIPLING By Cyril Falls WILLIAM MORRIS By John Drinkwater ROBERT BRIDGES By F. E. Brett Young MAURICE MAETERLINCK By Una Taylor
Yours truly Robert Louis Stevenson
R. L. STEVENSON
A CRITICAL STUDY BY FRANK SWINNERTON
LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI MCMXIV
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE MERRY HEART THE YOUNG IDEA THE CASEMENT THE HAPPY FAMILY ON THE STAIRCASE GEORGE GISSING: A CRITICAL STUDY
The Sargent portrait of Stevenson which forms the frontispiece to this volume has been included by permission of Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, to whom the publisher wishes to express his acknowledgments and thanks.
TO DOUGLAS GRAY IN MALICE
As the purpose of this book is entirely critical, and as there already exist several works dealing extensively with the life of Stevenson, the present biographical section is intentionally summary. Its object is merely to sketch in outline the principal events of Stevenson’s life, in order that what follows may require no passages of biographical elucidation. Stevenson was a writer of many sorts of stories, essays, poems; and in all this diversity he was at no time preoccupied with one particular form of art. In considering each form separately, as I purpose doing, it has been necessary to group into single divisions work written at greatly different times and in greatly differing conditions. In Mr. Graham Balfour’s “Life,” and very remarkably in Sir Sidney Colvin’s able commentaries upon Stevenson’s letters, may be found information at first hand which I could only give by acts of piracy. To those works, therefore, I refer the reader who wishes to follow in chronological detail the growth of Stevenson’s talent. They are, indeed, essential to all who are primarily interested in Stevenson the man. Here, the attempt will be made only to summarise the events of his days, and to estimate the ultimate value of his work in various departments of letters. This book is not a biography; it is not an “appreciation”; it is simply a critical study.