Nonfiction · 1905
Robert Louis Stevenson
A Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial
Alexander Japp corresponded with and personally visited Stevenson years before his death, and this memorial biography draws on that direct acquaintance — written close enough to Stevenson's own lifetime that Japp is working partly from memory and personal impression rather than the more distant archival reconstruction later biographers would rely on.
Japp published Robert Louis Stevenson: A Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial in 1905, his last book — more than a decade after Stevenson's 1894 death, and after a decade of critical assessments, memoirs and rival biographies he examines and argues with throughout. It is a different, independently written biography from Walter Alexander Raleigh's Robert Louis Stevenson, also in Bibliomancer's catalog.
Bibliomancer publishes the text exactly as Alexander H. Japp wrote it.
Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Chapter I — Introduction and First Impressions
- Chapter II — Treasure Island and Some Reminiscences
- Chapter III — The Child Father of the Man
- Chapter IV — Heredity Illustrated
- Chapter V — Travels
- Chapter VI — Some Earlier Letters
- Chapter VII — The Vailima Letters
- Chapter VIII — Work of Later Years
- Chapter IX — Some Characteristics
- Chapter X — A Samoan Memorial of R. L. Stevenson
- Chapter XI — Miss Stubbs’ Record of a Pilgrimage
- Chapter XII — His Genius and Methods
- Chapter XIII — Preacher and Mystic Fabulist
- Chapter XIV — Stevenson as Dramatist
- Chapter XV — Theory of Good and Evil
- Chapter XVI — Stevenson’s Gloom
- Chapter XVII — Proofs of Growth
- Chapter XVIII — Earlier Determinations and Results
- Chapter XIX — Edmund Clarence Stedman’s Estimate
- Chapter XX — Egotistic Element and Its Effects
- Chapter XXI — Unity in Stevenson’s Stories
- Chapter XXII — Personal Cheerfulness and Invented Gloom
- Chapter XXIII — Edinburgh Reviewers’ Dicta Inapplicable to Later Work
- Chapter XXIV — Mr Henley’s Spiteful Perversions
- Chapter XXV — Mr Christie Murray’s Impressions
- Chapter XXVI — Hero-Villains
- Chapter XXVII — Mr G. Moore, Mr Marriott Watson and Others
- Chapter XXVIII — Unexpected Combinations
- Chapter XXIX — Love of Vagabonds
- Chapter XXX — Lord Rosebery’s Case
- Chapter XXXI — Mr Gosse and Ms. Of Treasure Island
- Chapter XXXII — Stevenson Portraits
- Chapter XXXIII — Lapses and Errors in Criticism
- Chapter XXXIV — Letters and Poems in Testimony
- Appendix
- Footnotes
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1839–1905 · Victorian
Alexander H. Japp (1839–1905) was a Scottish author, journalist and publisher who wrote widely on natural history and literary biography, often under the pseudonym H. A. Page. His interest in Henry David Thoreau brought him to Robert Louis Stevenson's acquaintance at Braemar in August 1881; Stevenson read him the opening chapters of what became Treasure Island, and Japp arranged its serial publication in the magazine Young Folks. The two corresponded for the rest of Stevenson's life. Japp also wrote lives of Thoreau and De Quincey, and edited De Quincey's collected writings.
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