Treasure Island/Kidnapped/Weir of Hermiston/The Master of Ballantrae/The Black Arrow/The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde [antikvár]

Introductionrobert louis stevenson Certainly ranks among the outstanding writers from the golden age of adventure fiction that occurred between the 1870s and World War I. Yet, like a few of his contemporariesRudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, and Jack London, among othershe transcended this easy categorization, and moved on into the realm of great literature. Initially considered a writer of children's stories, then a teller of adventure tales, it was only in the last decade of his life that Stevenson was recognized as one of the finest writers of his time.Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born on November 13,1850, at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, the only child of Thomas and Isabella Balfour Stevenson. His background was solidly middle class; his father, grandfather, and two uncles were all successful civil engineers who specialized in harbor and lighthouse work, and they expected succeeding generations to follow them. A sickly child, Stevenson was plagued by lung ailments his whole life, and this made his early education sporadic and difficult. When he did begin formal education, however, he displayed only average aptitude in mathematics and the sciencesto the dismay of his fatherbut showed an exceptional brilliance in the humanities.The Stevenson household was materially comfortable but spiritually strict and narrow-minded; he experienced what he would later term a "covenanting childhood." As a young boy of quick and curious mind he found it stifling. "Sabbath observance," he later recalled, "makes a series of grim and perhaps serviceable pauses in the tenor of Scottish boyhooddays of great stillness and solitude for the rebellious mind, when the dearth of books and play, and in the intervals of studying the Shorter Catechism, the intellect and senses prey upon and test each other." As an only child, as well as a sickly one, he could do no wrong by his doting mother, but rarely lived up to the demands of his stern, somewhat dour father. These conditions made him ripe for a rebellious adolescence.As soon as his health permitted, at the age of sixteen, he entered Edinburgh University. Shy, slight of build and decidedly unathletic, Stevenson had some initial difficulty adjusting to college life, often cutting classes and participating in no university activities; he was a rebel and a loner. He described himself at the time as: "A certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student of changing humours, fine occasional purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, infinite yawnings during lectures, and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truancy." To please his father he began studying engineering, but grew fi:ustrated with both his limitations and lack of interest. As a compromise he switched to law. He eventually passed the bar, and became an "advocate," the Scottish equivalent of a barrister, but never practiced.At some point in his undergraduate days he seems to have gone through a radical transformation; he became something of a dandy, and embraced Bohemianism as a