[ebooks] Titter Ye Not! by William Hall in Arts-Photography

Description

Novelist and essayist; was born at Edinburgh; the son of Thomas Stevenson; a distinguished civil engineer. His health was extremely delicate. He was destined for the engineering profession; in which his family had for two generations been eminent; but having neither inclination nor physical strength for it; he in 1871 exchanged it for law; and was called to the Bar in 1875; but never practised.From childhood his interests had been literary; and in 1871 he began to contribute to the Edinburgh University Magazine and the Portfolio. A tour in a canoe in 1876 led to the publication in 1878 of his first book; An Inland Voyage. In the same year; The New Arabian Nights; afterwards separately published appeared in magazines; and in 1879 he brought out Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. In that year he went to California and married Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe in 1880 he entered upon a period of productiveness which; in view of his wretched health; was; both as regards quantity and worth; highly remarkable.The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edinburgh; and by the publication of Virginibus Puerisque. Other works followed in rapid succession. Treasure Island [1882]; Prince Otto and The Childrsquo;s Garden of Verse [1885]; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped [1886]; Underwoods (poetry); Memories and Portraits (essays); and The Merry Men; a collection of short stories [1887]; and in 1888 The Black Arrow.In 1887 he went to America; and in the following year visited the South Sea Islands where; in Samoa; he settled in 1890; and where he died and is buried. In 1889 The Master of Ballantrae appeared; in 1892 Across the Plains and The Wrecker; in 1893 Island Nights Entertainments and Catriona; and in 1894 The Ebb Tide in collaboration with his step-son; Mr. Lloyd Osbourne.By this time his health was completely broken; but to the last he continued the struggle; and left the fragments St. Ives and Weir of Hermiston; the latter containing some of his best work. They were published in 1897.Though the originality and power of Stevensonrsquo;s writings was recognised from the first by a select few; it was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide may be said to have turned with the publication of Treasure Island in 1882; which at once gave him an assured place among the foremost imaginative writers of the day. His greatest power is; however; shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th century; such as Kidnapped; Catriona; and Weir of Hermiston; and in those; e.g.; The Childrsquo;s Garden of Verse; which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology of child-life; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a marvellously powerful and subtle psychological story; and some of his short tales also are masterpieces. Of these Thrawn Janet and Will of the Mill may be mentioned as examples in widely different kinds.