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    Essays in the Art of Writing
    Essays in the Art of Writing
    Essays in the Art of Writing
    Ebook48 pages39 minutes

    Essays in the Art of Writing

    By Robert Louis Stevenson

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    About this ebook

    This book is a collection of essays penned by Robert Louis Stevenson, on the subject that he is most well-regarded for: writing. The following titles can be found within the book: 'On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature', 'The Morality of the Profession of Letters', 'Books which have Influenced Me', 'A Note on Realism', 'My First Book: 'Treasure Island', 'The Genesis of 'The Master of Ballantrae', and 'Preface To 'The Master of Ballantrae''.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateJan 9, 2020
    ISBN4064066120917
    Essays in the Art of Writing
    Author

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850, changing his second name to ‘Louis’ at the age of eighteen. He has always been loved and admired by countless readers and critics for ‘the excitement, the fierce joy, the delight in strangeness, the pleasure in deep and dark adventures’ found in his classic stories and, without doubt, he created some of the most horribly unforgettable characters in literature and, above all, Mr. Edward Hyde.

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      Book preview

      Essays in the Art of Writing - Robert Louis Stevenson

      Robert Louis Stevenson

      Essays in the Art of Writing

      Published by Good Press, 2019

      [email protected]

      EAN 4064066120917

      Table of Contents

      BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME [75a]

      A NOTE ON REALISM [93]

      MY FIRST BOOK: ‘TREASURE ISLAND’ [111]

      THE GENESIS OF ‘THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE’

      PREFACE TO ‘THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE’ [145]

      BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME [75a]

      Table of Contents

      The Editor [75b] has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped me.

      The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite passed away. Kent’s brief speech over the dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is D’Artagnan—the elderly D’Artagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim’s Progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.

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