The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 13

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

Rating 3.8
Word count
769K words
Chapters
77

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Ocean ThemeFate and FortuneLove EntanglementsHuman NatureLiterary CanonVictorian Era

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. 13 by Lloyd Osbourne et al. Author: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Jan 13, 2010

Editor's review

This book is Volume 13 of the Swanston Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's works, a digitized public-domain literary resource released by Project Gutenberg. For general readers, it is less a front door than a side entrance into Stevenson's many-sided output: here one finds not only the storyteller's narrative charm but also the more relaxed, more personal tone of his essays, sketches, and miscellaneous pieces. Its value lies in the awareness of edition it fosters—the Swanston Edition bears the marks of early collected-works editing and is well suited to observing how a nineteenth-century author was systematically assembled and circulated. It is not an introductory guide and offers no modern annotations, so it suits readers who have already read Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or other representative works and wish to touch the surrounding texts. It can be read on a quiet afternoon alongside a print copy for edition comparison, or searched by keyword by researchers working in the electronic text. A caution: this volume is in the original English, and the Gutenberg text is primarily a public-domain text with plain typesetting and annotation; readers must bring their own background knowledge.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the volume's opening note to identify the kinds of pieces collected, then decide whether to read closely or selectively.
  2. Read alongside Stevenson's major works, using this volume as a reference for understanding his writing background and style.
  3. Keep a notebook of edition differences and editorial clues; well suited to small exercises in textual comparison.
  4. For research purposes, search the Gutenberg text by keyword, then check the print collected works to verify.

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
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77

FAQ

What kind of Stevenson material is in this volume? This is Volume 13 of the Swanston Edition of Stevenson's works, one volume of a multi-volume collected edition; its contents follow that edition's editorial plan and are not a single long novel. It suits readers already familiar with the author's major works who want to read along the lines of the collected edition.
Does the Gutenberg edition include annotations or an introduction? Project Gutenberg mainly provides public-domain electronic texts and generally does not include modern scholarly annotations or introductions. This volume is plainly typeset, and readers must supply their own author biography, edition background, and historical context; it suits readers with some English reading and research ability.
Can I read this without having read Stevenson before? You can, but the experience will be diminished. This volume is not a selection designed for beginners and lacks plot guidance and background explanation. Reading Treasure Island or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde first and then returning to the collected volume makes it easier to understand the texts' place and writing context.

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.