The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 08

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.4
Word count
475K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Legendary LivesFate and FortuneComplex HumanityAdventure TaleNarrative TechniqueStevenson CollectionCollected WorksShort Story CollectionNineteenth-Century LiteratureScottish Literature

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 08 by StevensonAuthor: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 3, 2010

Editor's review

This volume is the eighth in the Swanston Edition of Stevenson's collected works. A public-domain English literary text, it serves as an accessible introduction to nineteenth-century English prose and narrative. Its value lies in a complete, readily available text that helps readers grow familiar with Stevenson's diction and paragraph structure; its strength is the retention of the original arrangement, which facilitates comparative reading and excerpting. It suits self-study, classroom support, and reading on an e-reader. Note that this is one volume of a collected edition, not a standalone work, and the pieces are only loosely related; readers should first review the volume's contents before deciding whether to read closely or selectively. For researchers, it can serve as one source text for checking quotations and comparing editions, but it should not replace a scholarly critical edition.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First check this volume's table of contents and scope, then decide whether to read every piece closely or read selectively.
  2. After finishing each piece, note its theme and language features in two or three sentences for easier review.
  3. When encountering unfamiliar expressions, first infer from context, then consult a dictionary, to avoid frequent interruptions.
  4. Read alongside other volumes of Stevenson to observe changes in his style.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48

FAQ

What kind of work by Stevenson is this volume? It is the eighth volume of the Swanston Edition of Stevenson's collected works, a public-domain English literary text. The specific contents should be confirmed against the e-book's table of contents; it is not a standalone edition of a single novel, so readers should first confirm its scope before planning their reading.
Can readers with only a basic command of English read this? They can try, but nineteenth-century English sentence patterns and vocabulary differ from modern English. Readers with a basic level should use a dictionary and a translation for comparison, starting with short pieces or passages rather than forcing themselves to read the whole volume at once.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? It can serve as a reference source for checking quotations and comparing editions, but academic citation should rely on an authoritative critical edition or print edition, with the source and volume of the electronic text noted, rather than treating a public-domain electronic edition as the final authority.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 Author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a nineteenth-century British writer known for adventure fiction and poetry. His representative work Treasure Island established a classic model for treasure-hunt adventure stories and has circulated widely in many translations; the library also holds the Spanish version La isla del tesoro and the German version Die Schatzinsel: Roman. Another representative work, A Child's Garden of Verses, writes from a child's perspective about play, imagination, and everyday feelings, with fresh language and natural rhythm, and is a common reader in English children's poetry. The library holds as many as 101 of his works, showing the variety of his subjects and forms. Public information is limited, so details of his life and education are not elaborated here; overall, his writing combines thrilling narrative with a lyrical tone, being strongly story-driven yet readable aloud, and has had a lasting influence on later adventure literature and children's literature.