Across the Plains
With other Memories and Essays

This collection of essays from the 1880s appeared two years before Stevenson's early death.

Robert Louis Stevenson (Author)

9781108003650, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

332 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.2 cm, 0.9 kg

The celebrated Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson arranged for his friend the art historian Sidney Colvin to select and organise the essays in this volume, many of which had originally appeared in 1888, though some date back to the early 1880s. It was published in 1892, two years before Stevenson's untimely death. Colvin obtained many of the pieces from their original publishers, including magazines such as Fraser's, Longman's, The Magazine of Art and Scribner's. What is particularly noteworthy about this collection is that although Stevenson had settled in the South Seas well before it appeared, all the items included were written prior to his journey there. Colvin mentions that the concluding pieces in particular were written during a period of considerable gloom and sickness for Stevenson, who himself claimed to 'recover peace of body and mind' after moving to the Pacific in 1890.

1. Across the plains
2. The old Pacific capital
3. Fontainebleau
4. Epilogue to 'An inland voyage'
5. Random memories
6. Random memories continued
7. The lantern-bearers
8. A chapter on dreams
9. Beggars
10. Letter to a young gentleman
11. Pulvis et umbra sumus
12. A Christmas sermon.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]