157-682: The Amateur Emigrant (in full: The Amateur Emigrant from the Clyde to Sandy Hook ) is Robert Louis Stevenson 's travel memoir of his journey from Scotland to California in 1879-1880. It is not a complete account, covering the first third, by ship from Europe to New York City . The middle leg of the trip is documented in Across the Plains (1892) with the final part covered in The Silverado Squatters (1883). The Amateur Emigrant
314-802: A travelogue , American Notes for General Circulation . In Notes , Dickens includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early as The Pickwick Papers , correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters. In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his trip to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies in Dickens's views on racial inequality. For instance, he has been criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor Eyre 's harsh crackdown during
471-427: A "red-hot socialist". But already by age 26 he was writing of looking back on this time "with something like regret. ... Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions." His cousin and biographer Sir Graham Balfour claimed that Stevenson "probably throughout life would, if compelled to vote, have always supported
628-535: A better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill" and a practical demonstration of "the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life". So that if they cannot be happy in the "handicap race for sixpenny pieces", let them take their own "by-road". In late 1873, when he was 23, Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England when he met two people who became very important to him: Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell and Sidney Colvin . Sitwell
785-521: A boot-blacking factory when his father John was incarcerated in a debtors' prison . After three years, he returned to school before beginning his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years; wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles; lectured and performed readings extensively; was an indefatigable letter writer; and campaigned vigorously for children's rights , education and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with
942-456: A brief illness in 1837. Unusually for Dickens, as a consequence of his shock, he stopped working, and he and Catherine stayed at a little farm on Hampstead Heath for a fortnight. Dickens idealised Mary; the character he fashioned after her, Rose Maylie , he found he could not now kill, as he had planned, in his fiction, and, according to Ackroyd, he drew on memories of her for his later descriptions of Little Nell and Florence Dombey. His grief
1099-747: A clerk in the Navy Pay Office afforded him a few years of private education, first at a dame school and then at a school run by William Giles, a dissenter , in Chatham. This period came to an end in June 1822, when John Dickens was recalled to Navy Pay Office headquarters at Somerset House and the family (except for Charles, who stayed behind to finish his final term at school) moved to Camden Town in London. The family had left Kent amidst rapidly mounting debts and, living beyond his means, John Dickens
1256-402: A cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean for the following summer. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and
1413-444: A darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he was ranked just behind Charles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world. Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh , Scotland, on 13 November 1850 to Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887),
1570-404: A detailed chronicle of the intersection of rivalries between the great powers and the first Samoan Civil War . As much as he said he disdained politics—"I used to think meanly of the plumber", he wrote to his friend Sidney Colvin, "but how he shines beside the politician!" —Stevenson felt himself obliged to take sides. He openly allied himself with chief Mataafa, whose rival Malietoa was backed by
1727-509: A failure." His mother accounted the revelation "the heaviest affliction" to befall her. "O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is", Stevenson wrote to his friend Charles Baxter, "to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world." Stevenson's rejection of the Presbyterian Church and Christian dogma, however, did not turn into lifelong atheism or agnosticism. On February 15, 1878,
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#17327768292741884-798: A few alterations and embellishments", as "Mrs Pipchin" in Dombey and Son . Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court , Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in The Old Curiosity Shop . On Sundays—with his sister Frances , free from her studies at
2041-564: A few days. Filled with sharp-eyed observations, it brilliantly conveys Stevenson’s perceptions of America and Americans. It also provides a very detailed and enjoyable account of what it was like to travel to America as an emigrant in the 19th century, during a time of mass migrations to the New World. Details such as the bedding arrangements, daily food rations, relationships with the crew and with higher grade ticket holders, passengers of other nationalities, entertainment, children - all provide
2198-581: A freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, thought to have been the model for the character Dora in David Copperfield . Maria's parents disapproved of the courtship and ended the relationship by sending her to school in Paris. In 1832, at
2355-525: A friendship with William Harrison Ainsworth , the author of the highwayman novel Rookwood (1834), whose bachelor salon in Harrow Road had become the meeting place for a set that included Daniel Maclise , Benjamin Disraeli , Edward Bulwer-Lytton and George Cruikshank . All these became his friends and collaborators, with the exception of Disraeli, and he met his first publisher, John Macrone, at
2512-460: A good school: "Much of the haphazard, desultory teaching, poor discipline punctuated by the headmaster's sadistic brutality, the seedy ushers and general run-down atmosphere, are embodied in Mr Creakle's Establishment in David Copperfield ." Dickens worked at the law office of Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys, of Holborn Court, Gray's Inn , as a junior clerk from May 1827 to November 1828. He
2669-476: A harmonious pattern of its own. Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality...Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing, and emasculate...The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are forced and material ... but by its immeasurable difference from life, which
2826-488: A home for the redemption of fallen women of the working class. Coutts envisioned a home that would replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reformative environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. After initially resisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage , in the Lime Grove area of Shepherd's Bush , which he managed for ten years, setting
2983-422: A lasting impression on Dickens and later influenced his fiction and essays, becoming the foundation of his interest in the reform of socio-economic and labour conditions, the rigours of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor. He later wrote that he wondered "how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age". As he recalled to John Forster (from Life of Charles Dickens ): The blacking-warehouse
3140-437: A leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella (born Balfour, 1829–1897). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, he changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and he dropped "Balfour" in 1873. Lighthouse design was the family's profession; Thomas's father (Robert's grandfather) was the civil engineer Robert Stevenson , and Thomas's brothers (Robert's uncles) Alan and David were in
3297-462: A major contributor to the journals Household Words (1850–1859) and All the Year Round (1858–1870). Both journals contained a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and dealt with aspects in the culture. For example, the latter journal included Dickens' assessment of Madame Tussauds wax museum on Baker Street, which he called "something more than an exhibition, it is an institution." In 1854, at
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#17327768292743454-425: A mother find her proper sphere inside the home: "I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back." His mother's failure to request his return was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women. Righteous indignation stemming from his own situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works, and it
3611-695: A part of the family through her charm and wit. The Stevensons shuttled back and forth between Scotland and the Continent, finally settling in 1884 in the Westbourne district of the southern English seaside town of Bournemouth in Hampshire (now in Dorset ). Stevenson had moved there to benefit from its sea air. They lived in a house Stevenson named 'Skerryvore' after a Scottish lighthouse built by his uncle Alan. From April 1885, 34-year-old Stevenson had
3768-913: A patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary named William Ernest Henley , an energetic and talkative poet with a wooden leg. Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888, and he is often considered to be the inspiration for Long John Silver in Treasure Island . Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that. He made long and frequent trips to
3925-488: A portmanteau he inhabited long before The Economist took it up. For a writer who made his reputation crusading against the squalor of the Industrial Revolution , Dickens was a creature of capitalism; he used everything from the powerful new printing presses to the enhanced advertising revenues to the expansion of railroads to sell more books. Dickens ensured that his books were available in cheap bindings for
4082-417: A pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying
4239-419: A professor, Fleeming Jenkin , whose house staged amateur drama in which Stevenson took part, and whose biography he would later write. Perhaps most important at this point in his life was a cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (known as "Bob"), a lively and light-hearted young man who, instead of the family profession, had chosen to study art. In 1867, Stevenson's family took a lease on Swanston Cottage, in
4396-676: A pseudonym for some years. Dickens apparently adopted it from the nickname 'Moses', which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens , after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield . When pronounced by anyone with a head cold, "Moses" became "Boses"—later shortened to Boz . Dickens's own name was considered "queer" by a contemporary critic, who wrote in 1849: "Mr Dickens, as if in revenge for his own queer name, does bestow still queerer ones upon his fictitious creations." Dickens contributed to and edited journals throughout his literary career. In January 1835,
4553-549: A renewed enthusiasm for the joys of Christmas in Britain and America. The seeds for the story became planted in Dickens's mind during a trip to Manchester to witness the conditions of the manufacturing workers there. This, along with scenes he had recently witnessed at the Field Lane Ragged School , caused Dickens to resolve to "strike a sledge hammer blow" for the poor. As the idea for the story took shape and
4710-595: A reply confirming Powell's embezzlement, but once the directors realised this information might have to be produced in court, they refused to make further disclosures. Owing to the difficulties of providing evidence in America to support his accusations, Dickens eventually made a private settlement with Powell out of court. Angela Burdett Coutts , heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens in May 1846 about setting up
4867-524: A rich and colorful tapestry of life on board the ship. The work was never published in full in Stevenson's lifetime. It shocked the sensibilities of his middle-class friends and family that he was so close with rough people. Certain passages were considered too graphic by the publisher, and also by Stevenson's father Thomas Stevenson, who bought all the copies of the already printed travelogue, judging it beneath his son's talent. However The Amateur Emigrant
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5024-403: A satire on the judicial system, helped support a reformist movement that culminated in the 1870s legal reform in England. A Tale of Two Cities (set in London and Paris) is regarded as his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career. The term Dickensian
5181-440: A significant artistic break in Dickens's career as his novels became more serious in theme and more carefully planned than his early works. At about this time, he was made aware of a large embezzlement at the firm where his brother, Augustus , worked (John Chapman & Co). It had been carried out by Thomas Powell , a clerk, who was on friendly terms with Dickens and who had acted as mentor to Augustus when he started work. Powell
5338-496: A spawn of inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of England". He is referring to the steady growth in social legislation in Britain since the first of the Conservative-sponsored Factory Acts (which, in 1833, established a professional Factory Inspectorate ). Stevenson cautioned that this "new waggon-load of laws" points to a future in which our grandchildren might "taste
5495-589: A stranger case still if Robert Louis Stevenson ever forgot Jules Simoneau. While in Monterey, he wrote an evocative article about "the Old Pacific Capital" of Monterey. By December 1879, aged 29, Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco where he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts," in an effort to support himself through his writing. But by
5652-636: A tale of European and American misconduct. His concern for the Polynesians is also found in the South Sea Letters , published in magazines in 1891 (and then in book form as In the South Seas in 1896). In an effort he feared might result in his own deportation, Stevenson helped secure the recall of two European officials. A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892) was
5809-465: A tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851. The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was 11. Illness was a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin. Contemporaneous views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it
5966-505: A trip 30 miles into Illinois . During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raising the question of international copyright laws and the pirating of his work in America. He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed by Washington Irving , to sign a petition for him to take to Congress, but the press were generally hostile to this, saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it
6123-422: A work called The Life of Our Lord (1846), a book about the life of Christ, written with the purpose of sharing his faith with his children and family. In a scene from David Copperfield , Dickens echoed Geoffrey Chaucer 's use of Luke 23:34 from Troilus and Criseyde (Dickens held a copy in his library), with G. K. Chesterton writing, "among the great canonical English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have
6280-554: A young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Sidney Colvin , Andrew Lang , Edmund Gosse , Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley , the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island . In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands , his writing turned from romance and adventure fiction toward
6437-495: Is a remarkable revelation of the intermingled complexities of class, race and gender in late Victorian Britain. Andrew Noble (1991) says it was Stevenson's greatest work, due to his willingness to confront the difficult social conditions of his time. Contents: "The Story of a Lie" was a product of this trip and was published in the New Quarterly Magazine in 1879. Both texts were eventually published together as
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6594-508: Is designed and significant. It is not clear, however, that in this there was any real basis for disagreement with James. Stevenson had presented James with a copy of Kidnapped , but it was Treasure Island that James favoured. Written as a story for boys, Stevenson had thought it in "no need of psychology or fine writing", but its success is credited with liberating children's writing from the "chains of Victorian didacticism ". During his college years, Stevenson briefly identified himself as
6751-465: Is ever a "compromise") and to invite "anarchy": it is "the sentimentalist preparing the pathway for the brute". In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco from Samuel Merritt and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help." The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered
6908-573: Is the Sam Weller Bump." A publishing phenomenon, John Sutherland called The Pickwick Papers "[t]he most important single novel of the Victorian era". The unprecedented success led to numerous spin-offs and merchandise including Pickwick cigars, playing cards, china figurines, Sam Weller puzzles, Weller boot polish and joke books. The Sam Weller Bump testifies not merely to Dickens's comic genius but to his acumen as an "authorpreneur",
7065-488: Is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country... if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children's, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will, in that case, be cast out into outer darkness". Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens ( / ˈ d ɪ k ɪ n z / ; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870)
7222-495: Is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters. Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 1 Mile End Terrace (now 393 Commercial Road), Landport in Portsea Island ( Portsmouth ), Hampshire , the second of eight children of Elizabeth Dickens (née Barrow; 1789–1863) and John Dickens (1785–1851). His father
7379-563: The Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls , who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which returned to him many years later. In August 1880, he sailed with Fanny and Lloyd from New York to Britain and found his parents and his friend Sidney Colvin on the wharf at Liverpool , happy to see him return home. Gradually, his wife was able to patch up differences between father and son and make herself
7536-559: The American Civil War . Their children were Isobel (or "Belle"), Lloyd and Hervey (who died in 1875). But anger over her husband's infidelities led to a number of separations. In 1875, she had taken her children to France where she and Isobel studied art. By the time Stevenson met her, Fanny was herself a magazine short-story writer of recognised ability. Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, but Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote
7693-735: The Corn Laws . Dickens lasted only ten weeks on the job before resigning due to a combination of exhaustion and frustration with one of the paper's co-owners. A Francophile, Dickens often holidayed in France and, in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French, called the French "the first people in the universe". During his visit to Paris, Dickens met the French literati Alexandre Dumas , Victor Hugo , Eugène Scribe , Théophile Gautier , François-René de Chateaubriand and Eugène Sue . In early 1849, Dickens started to write David Copperfield . It
7850-667: The Covenanters . Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in "The Land of Counterpane" in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), dedicating the book to his nurse. Stevenson was an only child, both strange-looking and eccentric, and he found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age 6, a problem repeated at age 11 when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy ; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at Colinton . His frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, so he
8007-618: The Morning Chronicle launched an evening edition, under the editorship of the Chronicle ' s music critic, George Hogarth . Hogarth invited him to contribute Street Sketches and Dickens became a regular visitor to his Fulham house—excited by Hogarth's friendship with Walter Scott (whom Dickens greatly admired) and enjoying the company of Hogarth's three daughters: Georgina, Mary and 19-year-old Catherine. Dickens made rapid progress both professionally and socially. He began
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#17327768292748164-608: The RMS Britannia during their first trip to the United States and Canada. At this time Georgina Hogarth , another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone to care for the young family they had left behind. She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870. Dickens modelled the character of Agnes Wickfield after Georgina and Mary. He described his impressions in
8321-655: The Royal Academy of Music —he spent the day at the Marshalsea. Dickens later used the prison as a setting in Little Dorrit . To pay for his board and to help his family, Dickens was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station , where he earned six shillings a week pasting labels on pots of boot blacking. The strenuous and often harsh working conditions made
8478-467: The union with Britain (she had "majestically demonstrated her incapacity to rule Ireland") nor "landlordism" (scarcely more defensible in Ireland than, as he had witnessed it, in the goldfields of California). Rather he protests the readiness to pass "lightly" over crimes—"unmanly murders and the harshest extremes of boycotting "—where these are deemed "political". This he argues is to "defeat law" (which
8635-451: The 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers , a publishing phenomenon—thanks largely to the introduction of the character Sam Weller in the fourth episode—that sparked Pickwick merchandise and spin-offs. Within a few years, Dickens had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most of them published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered
8792-554: The 1860s Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it. From Richmond, Virginia , Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward, with brief pauses in Cincinnati and Louisville, to St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire to see an American prairie before returning east. A group of 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Looking Glass Prairie,
8949-844: The 18th-century magazines Tatler and The Spectator . Dickens was perturbed by the return to power of the Tories, whom he described as "people whom, politically, I despise and abhor." He had been tempted to stand for the Liberals in Reading, but decided against it due to financial straits. He wrote three anti-Tory verse satires ("The Fine Old English Gentleman", "The Quack Doctor's Proclamation", and "Subjects for Painters") which were published in The Examiner . On 22 January 1842, Dickens and his wife arrived in Boston , Massachusetts, aboard
9106-540: The 27-year-old wrote to his father and stated: Christianity is among other things, a very wise, noble and strange doctrine of life ... You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of life, and as a wisdom for this world ... I have a good heart, and believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us all ... There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't know where, to the effect that all things work together for good for those who love
9263-643: The Catholic Church as "that curse upon the world." Dickens also rejected the Evangelical conviction that the Bible was the infallible word of God. His ideas on Biblical interpretation were similar to the Liberal Anglican Arthur Penrhyn Stanley 's doctrine of " progressive revelation ". Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky referred to Dickens as "that great Christian writer". In December 1845, Dickens took up
9420-690: The Collected Farces of Elizabeth Inchbald . At the age of seven, he first saw Joseph Grimaldi —the father of modern clowning —perform at the Star Theatre in Rochester , Kent. He later imitated Grimaldi's clowning on several occasions, and would also edit the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi . He retained poignant memories of childhood, helped by an excellent memory of people and events, which he used in his writing. His father's brief work as
9577-1042: The Conservative candidate." In 1866, then 15-year-old Stevenson did vote for Benjamin Disraeli , the Tory democrat and future Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, for the Lord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh . But this was against a markedly illiberal challenger, the historian Thomas Carlyle . Carlyle was notorious for his anti-democratic and pro-slavery views. In "The Day After Tomorrow", appearing in The Contemporary Review (April 1887), Stevenson suggested: "we are all becoming Socialists without knowing it". Legislation "grows authoritative, grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts
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#17327768292749734-548: The Germans whose firms were beginning to monopolise copra and cocoa bean processing. Stevenson was alarmed above all by what he perceived as the Samoans' economic innocence—their failure to secure their claim to proprietorship of the land (in a Lockean sense) through improving management and labour. In 1894 just months before his death, he addressed the island chiefs: There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it
9891-676: The Lord. Strange as it may seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, bringing me nearer to what I think you would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who care to look for him. Stevenson did not resume attending church in Scotland. However, he did teach Sunday School lessons in Samoa, and prayers he wrote in his final years were published posthumously. Justifying his rejection of an established profession, in 1877 Stevenson offered "An Apology for Idlers". "A happy man or woman", he reasoned, "is
10048-435: The Riots of 'Eighty , as part of the Master Humphrey's Clock series (1840–41), were all published in monthly instalments before being made into books. Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd has called Barnaby Rudge "one of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels". The poet Edgar Allan Poe read Barnaby Rudge , and the talking raven that featured in the novel inspired in part Poe's 1845 poem " The Raven ". In
10205-430: The South Seas . Stevenson left Sydney , Australia, on the Janet Nicoll in April 1890 for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands. He intended to produce another book of travel writing to follow his earlier book In the South Seas , but it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship in her account The Cruise of the Janet Nichol .) A fellow passenger
10362-487: The Stevensons' dinner table. Largely bedridden, Stevenson described himself as living "like a weevil in a biscuit." Yet, despite ill health, during his three years in Westbourne, Stevenson wrote the bulk of his most popular work: Treasure Island , Kidnapped , Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which established his wider reputation), A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods . Thomas Stevenson died in 1887 leaving his 36-year-old son feeling free to follow
10519-452: The US ended with a trip to Canada—Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal—where he appeared on stage in light comedies. Soon after his return to England, Dickens began work on the first of his Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol , written in 1843, which was followed by The Chimes in 1844 and The Cricket on the Hearth in 1845. Of these, A Christmas Carol was most popular and, tapping into an old tradition, did much to promote
10676-436: The advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took a second-class passage on the steamship Devonia , in part to save money but also to learn how others travelled and to increase the adventure of the journey. He then travelled overland by train from New York City to California. He later wrote about the experience in The Amateur Emigrant . It was a good experience for his writing, but it broke his health. He
10833-469: The advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. Stevenson headed for Colorado with his widowed mother and family. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage at Saranac Lake, New York . During the intensely cold winter, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra . He also began The Master of Ballantrae and lightheartedly planned
10990-458: The age of 20, Dickens was energetic and increasingly self-confident. He enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted to become, and yet knew he wanted fame. Drawn to the theatre—he became an early member of the Garrick Club —he landed an acting audition at Covent Garden, where the manager George Bartley and the actor Charles Kemble were to see him. Dickens prepared meticulously and decided to imitate
11147-478: The behest of Sir John Franklin 's widow Lady Jane , Dickens viciously attacked Arctic explorer John Rae in Household Words for his report to the Admiralty , based on interviews with local Inuit , that the members of Franklin's lost expedition had resorted to cannibalism . These attacks would later be expanded on his 1856 play The Frozen Deep , which satirises Rae and the Inuit. Twentieth-century archaeology work in King William Island later confirmed that
11304-444: The benefits of freedom and common to all, were truly benefits of wealth, and took their value from our neighbour's poverty...Freedom to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently entreated, and driven to their mines and workshops by
11461-479: The best-selling novels of all time. Themes in Great Expectations include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. In early September 1860, in a field behind Gads Hill, Dickens made a bonfire of most of his correspondence; he spared only letters on business matters. Since Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her, the extent of the affair between
11618-609: The capital, on which they built the islands' first two-storey house. Fanny's sister, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, wrote that "it was in Samoa that the word 'home' first began to have a real meaning for these gypsy wanderers". In May 1891, they were joined by Stevenson's mother, Margaret. While his wife set about managing and working the estate, 40-year-old Stevenson took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales"), and began collecting local stories. Often he would exchange these for his own tales. The first work of literature in Samoan
11775-452: The comedian Charles Mathews, but ultimately he missed the audition because of a cold. Before another opportunity arose, he had set out on his career as a writer. In 1833, Dickens submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk", to the London periodical Monthly Magazine . His uncle William Barrow offered him a job on The Mirror of Parliament and he worked in the House of Commons for
11932-465: The comedic merits of Punch and Judy , a puppet show dominated by the anarchic clowning of Mr. Punch. In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1856). It was here that he indulged in the amateur theatricals described in Forster's Life of Charles Dickens . During this period, he worked closely with
12089-414: The company of the novelist Henry James . They had met previously in London and had recently exchanged views in journal articles on the "art of fiction" and thereafter in a correspondence in which they expressed their admiration for each other's work. After James had moved to Bournemouth to help support his invalid sister, Alice , he took up the invitation to pay daily visits to Skerryvore for conversation at
12246-602: The couple returned to lodgings at Furnival's Inn . The first of their ten children , Charles, was born in January 1837 and a few months later the family set up home in Bloomsbury at 48 Doughty Street, London (on which Charles had a three-year lease at £80 a year) from 25 March 1837 until December 1839. Dickens's younger brother Frederick and Catherine's 17-year-old sister Mary Hogarth moved in with them. Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after
12403-552: The dying sun, Smiled well content, and to this childish task Around the fire addressed its evening hours. In other respects too, Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian ; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress. Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels. More significantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist . In January 1873, when he
12560-603: The eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King Kalākaua . He befriended the king's niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani , who also had Scottish heritage. He spent time at the Gilbert Islands , Tahiti , New Zealand and the Samoan Islands . During this period, he completed The Master of Ballantrae , composed two ballads based on
12717-561: The editorship of the London-based Daily News , a liberal paper through which Dickens hoped to advocate, in his own words, "the Principles of Progress and Improvement, of Education and Civil and Religious Liberty and Equal Legislation." Among the other contributors Dickens chose to write for the paper were the radical economist Thomas Hodgskin and the social reformer Douglas William Jerrold , who frequently attacked
12874-455: The elder Stevenson was naturally disappointed, the surprise cannot have been great, and Stevenson's mother reported that he was "wonderfully resigned" to his son's choice. To provide some security, it was agreed that Stevenson should read law (again at Edinburgh University) and be called to the Scottish bar . In his 1887 poetry collection Underwoods , Stevenson muses on his having turned from
13031-523: The end of the winter, his health was broken again and he found himself at death's door. Fanny was now divorced and recovered from her own illness, and she came to his bedside and nursed him to recovery. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success." When his father heard of his 28-year-old son's condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period. Fanny and Robert were married in May 1880. She
13188-591: The essay "On falling in love" for The Cornhill Magazine . They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France. In August 1878, she returned to San Francisco and Stevenson remained in Europe, making the walking trip that formed the basis for Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). But he set off to join her in August 1879, aged 28, against
13345-527: The event, but reserved his fury for Indians, wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in India so that he would be able to "do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested." In 1857, Dickens hired professional actresses for The Frozen Deep , which he and his protégé Wilkie Collins had written. Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Ternan , and this passion
13502-513: The exaggerated and romantic world that, as a child, he had entered as proud owner of Skelt's Juvenile Drama—a toy set of cardboard characters who were actors in melodramatic dramas. "A Gossip on Romance" (1882) and "A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's" (1887) imply that it is better to entertain than to instruct. Stevenson very much saw himself in the mould of Sir Walter Scott, a storyteller with an ability to transport his readers away from themselves and their circumstances. He took issue with what he saw as
13659-478: The expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act , Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left the Marshalsea, for the home of Mrs Roylance. Charles's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, did not immediately support his removal from the boot-blacking warehouse. This influenced Dickens's view that a father should rule the family and
13816-550: The family moved to Norfolk Street, Fitzrovia . When Charles was four, they relocated to Sheerness and thence to Chatham , Kent, where he spent his formative years until the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". Charles spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously, including the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding , as well as Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas . He read and re-read The Arabian Nights and
13973-399: The family profession: Say not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child. But rather say: In the afternoon of time A strenuous family dusted from its hands The sand of granite, and beholding far Along the sounding coast its pyramids And tall memorials catch
14130-472: The family's engineering works. In 1868, this took him to Anstruther and for a stay of six weeks in Wick , where his family was building a sea wall and had previously built a lighthouse. He was to return to Wick several times over his lifetime and included it in his travel writings. He also accompanied his father on his official tour of Orkney and Shetland islands lighthouses in 1869 and spent three weeks on
14287-492: The first editor of his letters after his death. He placed Stevenson's first paid contribution in The Portfolio , an essay titled "Roads". Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang , Edmund Gosse and Leslie Stephen , the editor of The Cornhill Magazine , who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen took Stevenson to visit
14444-478: The first time early in 1832. He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn and worked as a political journalist, reporting on Parliamentary debates, and he travelled across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle . His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces, published in 1836: Sketches by Boz —Boz being a family nickname he employed as
14601-404: The following year in England and Ireland. Other works soon followed, including A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1861), which were resounding successes. Set in London and Paris, A Tale of Two Cities is his best-known work of historical fiction and includes the famous opening sentence "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It is regularly touted as one of
14758-449: The greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister," Stevenson wrote. "I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them." Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited
14915-420: The house rules, reviewing the accounts and interviewing prospective residents. Emigration and marriage were central to Dickens's agenda for the women on leaving Urania Cottage, from which it is estimated that about 100 women graduated between 1847 and 1859. As a young man, Dickens expressed a distaste for certain aspects of organised religion. In 1836, in a pamphlet titled Sunday Under Three Heads , he defended
15072-420: The house. The success of Sketches by Boz led to a proposal from publishers Chapman and Hall for Dickens to supply text to match Robert Seymour 's engraved illustrations in a monthly letterpress . Seymour committed suicide after the second instalment and Dickens, who wanted to write a connected series of sketches, hired " Phiz " to provide the engravings (which were reduced from four to two per instalment) for
15229-425: The household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy) was more fervently religious. Her mix of Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child, and he showed a precocious concern for religion. But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from John Bunyan and the Bible as he lay sick in bed and telling tales of
15386-408: The island of Erraid in 1870. He enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest. The voyage with his father pleased him because a similar journey of Walter Scott with Robert Stevenson had provided the inspiration for Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate . In April 1871, Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters. Though
15543-616: The knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long afterwards, in Oliver Twist. When the warehouse was moved to Chandos Street in the smart, busy district of Covent Garden , the boys worked in a room in which the window gave onto the street. Small audiences gathered and watched them at work—in Dickens's biographer Simon Callow 's estimation, the public display was "a new refinement added to his misery". A few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £450. On
15700-465: The lash of famine. In January 1888, aged 37, in response to American press coverage of the Land War in Ireland, Stevenson penned a political essay (rejected by Scribner's magazine and never published in his lifetime) that advanced a broadly conservative theme: the necessity of "staying internal violence by rigid law". Notwithstanding his title, "Confessions of a Unionist ", Stevenson defends neither
15857-494: The legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp . He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously). He made a voyage in 1889 with Lloyd on the trading schooner Equator , visiting Butaritari , Mariki, Apaiang and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands . They spent several months on Abemama with tyrant-chief Tem Binoka , whom Stevenson described in In
16014-522: The lower orders as well as in morocco-and-gilt for people of quality; his ideal readership included everyone from the pickpockets who read Oliver Twist to Queen Victoria, who found it "exceedingly interesting". On its impact on mass culture, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, " 'Literature' is not a big enough category for Pickwick . It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call 'entertainment'." In November 1836, Dickens accepted
16171-546: The members of the Franklin expedition resorted to cannibalism. In 1855, when Dickens's good friend and Liberal MP Austen Henry Layard formed an Administrative Reform Association to demand significant reforms of Parliament, Dickens joined and volunteered his resources in support of Layard's cause. With the exception of Lord John Russell , who was the only leading politician in whom Dickens had any faith and to whom he later dedicated A Tale of Two Cities , Dickens believed that
16328-523: The midst of all his activity during this period, there was discontent with his publishers and John Macrone was bought off, while Richard Bentley signed over all his rights in Oliver Twist . Other signs of a certain restlessness and discontent emerged; in Broadstairs he flirted with Eleanor Picken, the young fiancée of his solicitor's best friend and one night grabbed her and ran with her down to
16485-624: The most in common." Dickens disapproved of Roman Catholicism and 19th-century evangelicalism , seeing both as extremes of Christianity and likely to limit personal expression, and was critical of what he saw as the hypocrisy of religious institutions and philosophies like spiritualism , all of which he considered deviations from the true spirit of Christianity, as shown in the book he wrote for his family in 1846. While Dickens advocated equal rights for Catholics in England, he strongly disliked how individual civil liberties were often threatened in countries where Catholicism predominated and referred to
16642-679: The neighbourhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau , staying at Barbizon , Grez-sur-Loing and Nemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there. He also travelled to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres. He qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, aged 24, and his father added a brass plate to the Heriot Row house reading "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate". His law studies did influence his books, but he never practised law; all his energies were spent in travel and writing. One of his journeys
16799-522: The next decade, in which he was to write only two novels. His first reading tour, lasting from April 1858 to February 1859, consisted of 129 appearances in 49 towns throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Dickens's continued fascination with the theatrical world was written into the theatre scenes in Nicholas Nickleby , and he found an outlet in public readings. In 1866, he undertook a series of public readings in England and Scotland, with more
16956-456: The novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins . In 1856, his income from writing allowed him to buy Gads Hill Place in Higham, Kent . As a child, Dickens had walked past the house and dreamed of living in it. The area was also the scene of some of the events of Shakespeare 's Henry IV, Part 1 and this literary connection pleased him. During this time Dickens was also the publisher, editor and
17113-512: The other children. During this period, whilst pondering a project to give public readings for his own profit, Dickens was approached through a charitable appeal by Great Ormond Street Hospital to help it survive its first major financial crisis. His "Drooping Buds" essay in Household Words earlier on 3 April 1852 was considered by the hospital's founders to have been the catalyst for the hospital's success. Dickens, whose philanthropy
17270-681: The peace of the world, and would be a rock in Louis Napoleon 's way," and that "I feel for Italy almost as if I were an Italian born." Dickens also published dozens of writings in Household Words supporting vaccination , including multiple laudations for vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner . Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 , Dickens joined in the widespread criticism of the East India Company for its role in
17427-399: The people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. "Look into your churches—diminished congregations and scanty attendance. People have grown sullen and obstinate, and are becoming disgusted with the faith which condemns them to such a day as this, once in every seven. They display their feeling by staying away [from church]. Turn into the streets [on a Sunday] and mark
17584-442: The place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as
17741-474: The pleasures of existence in something far liker an ant-heap that any previous human polity". Yet in reproducing the essay his latter-day libertarian admirers omit his express understanding for the abandonment of Whiggish , classical-liberal notions of laissez faire . "Liberty", Stevenson wrote, "has served us a long while" but like all other virtues "she has taken wages". [Liberty] has dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we were accustomed to admire as
17898-609: The political aristocracy and their incompetence were the death of England. When he and Layard were accused of fomenting class conflict, Dickens replied that the classes were already in opposition and the fault was with the aristocratic class. Dickens used his pulpit in Household Words to champion the Reform Association. He also commented on foreign affairs, declaring his support for Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini , helping raise funds for their campaigns and stating that "a united Italy would be of vast importance to
18055-478: The position of editor of Bentley's Miscellany , a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836, as he finished the last instalments of The Pickwick Papers , he began writing the beginning instalments of Oliver Twist —writing as many as 90 pages a month—while continuing work on Bentley's and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. Oliver Twist , published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories and
18212-662: The principal partners at John Chapman & Co. Dickens immediately sent a letter to Lewis Gaylord Clark , editor of the New York literary magazine The Knickerbocker , saying that Powell was a forger and thief. Clark published the letter in the New-York Tribune and several other papers picked up on the story. Powell began proceedings to sue these publications and Clark was arrested. Dickens, realising that he had acted in haste, contacted John Chapman & Co to seek written confirmation of Powell's guilt. Dickens did receive
18369-530: The printing of Robert's first publication at 16, entitled The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 . It was an account of the Covenanters' rebellion and was published in 1866, the 200th anniversary of the event. In September 1857, when he was six years old, Stevenson went to Mr Henderson's School in India Street, Edinburgh, but because of poor health stayed only a few weeks and did not return until October 1859, aged eight. During his many absences, he
18526-605: The rigid gloom that reigns over everything around." Dickens honoured the figure of Jesus Christ . He is regarded as a professing Christian. His son, Henry Fielding Dickens , described him as someone who "possessed deep religious convictions". In the early 1840s, he had shown an interest in Unitarian Christianity and Robert Browning remarked that "Mr Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian." Professor Gary Colledge has written that he "never strayed from his attachment to popular lay Anglicanism ". Dickens authored
18683-596: The same field. Thomas's maternal grandfather Thomas Smith had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family were gentry , tracing their lineage back to Alexander Balfour, who had held the lands of Inchrye in Fife in the fifteenth century. His mother's father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton , and her siblings included physician George William Balfour and marine engineer James Balfour . Stevenson spent
18840-531: The sea. He declared they were both to drown there in the "sad sea waves". She finally got free, and afterwards kept her distance. In June 1841, he precipitously set out on a two-month tour of Scotland and then, in September 1841, telegraphed Forster that he had decided to go to America. Master Humphrey's Clock was shut down, though Dickens was still keen on the idea of the weekly magazine, a form he liked, an appreciation that had begun with his childhood reading of
18997-408: The serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. Cliffhanger endings in his serial publications kept readers in suspense. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at
19154-702: The singular The Amateur Emigrant from the Clyde to Sandy Hook in 1895, the year after Stevenson's death. Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson ; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island , Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses . Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As
19311-543: The story. The resulting story became The Pickwick Papers and, although the first few episodes were not successful, the introduction of the Cockney character Sam Weller in the fourth episode (the first to be illustrated by Phiz) marked a sharp climb in its popularity. The final instalment sold 40,000 copies. On the impact of the character, The Paris Review stated, "arguably the most historic bump in English publishing
19468-446: The tendency in French realism to dwell on sordidness and ugliness. In "The Lantern-Bearer" (1888) he appears to take Emile Zola to task for failing to seek out nobility in his protagonists. In "A Humble Remonstrance", Stevenson answers Henry James 's claim in "The Art of Fiction" (1884) that the novel competes with life. Stevenson protests that no novel can ever hope to match life's complexity; it merely abstracts from life to produce
19625-480: The two remains speculative. In the 1930s, Thomas Wright recounted that Ternan had unburdened herself to a Canon Benham and gave currency to rumours they had been lovers. Dickens's daughter, Kate Perugini, stated that the two had a son who died in infancy to biographer Gladys Storey in an interview before the former's death in 1929. Storey published her account in Dickens and Daughter , though no contemporary evidence
19782-673: The village of Swanston at the foot of the Pentland Hills , for use as a summer holiday home. They held the lease until 1880. During their tenancy, the young Robert Louis made frequent use of the cottage, being attracted by the quiet country life and the feeling of remoteness. It is likely that the time he spent there influenced his later writing as well as his wider outlook on life, particularly his love of nature and of wild places. The house and its romantic location are thought to have inspired several of his works. Each year during his university holidays, Stevenson also travelled to inspect
19939-782: The way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her own disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor would individually pay a halfpenny to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers. His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every creative medium. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1853 novel Bleak House ,
20096-407: The working classes fared. At the last minute he was convinced by friends to purchase a ticket one grade above the lowest, which he was later thankful for after seeing the conditions at the bow of the boat, but he still lived among the lower classes. Stevenson described the crowded weeks in steerage with the poor and sick, as well as stowaways, and his initial reactions to New York City, where he spent
20253-503: The writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He later wrote that as the tale unfolded he "wept and laughed, and wept again" as he "walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed". After living briefly in Italy (1844), Dickens travelled to Switzerland (1846), where he began work on Dombey and Son (1846–48). This and David Copperfield (1849–50) mark
20410-645: Was Jack Buckland , whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892), which Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together. Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894. In December 1889, 39-year-old Stevenson and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and there he and Fanny decided to settle. In January 1890 they purchased 314 + 1 ⁄ 4 acres (127.2 ha) at Vailima, some miles inland from Apia
20567-586: Was bronchiectasis or sarcoidosis . The family also summered in the spa town of Bridge of Allan , in North Berwick , and in Peebles for the sake of Stevenson's and his mother's health; "Stevenson's cave" in Bridge of Allan was reportedly the inspiration for the character Ben Gunn 's cave dwelling in Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island . Stevenson's parents were both devout Presbyterians , but
20724-592: Was 22, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: "Disregard everything our parents have taught us". Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth. Stevenson no longer believed in God and had grown tired of pretending to be something he was not: "am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?" His father professed himself devastated: "You have rendered my whole life
20881-476: Was 40; he was 29. He said that he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom." He travelled with his new wife and her son Lloyd north of San Francisco to Napa Valley and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena (today designated Robert Louis Stevenson State Park ). He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters . He met Charles Warren Stoddard , co-editor of
21038-399: Was a 34-year-old woman with a son, who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a warm correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as " Madonna "). Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was
21195-848: Was a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, a friend from the Speculative Society, a frequent travel companion, and the author of The Art of Golf (1887). This trip was the basis of his first travel book An Inland Voyage (1878). Stevenson had a long correspondence with fellow Scot J.M. Barrie . He invited Barrie to visit him in Samoa , but the two never met. The canoe voyage with Simpson brought Stevenson to Grez-sur-Loing in September 1876, where he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914), born in Indianapolis . She had married at age 17 and moved to Nevada to rejoin husband Samuel after his participation in
21352-415: Was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office and was temporarily stationed in the district. He asked Christopher Huffam, rigger to His Majesty's Navy, gentleman and head of an established firm, to act as godfather to Charles. Huffam is thought to be the inspiration for Paul Dombey, the owner of a shipping company in Dickens's novel Dombey and Son (1848). In January 1815, John Dickens was called back to London, and
21509-464: Was a gifted mimic and impersonated those around him: clients, lawyers and clerks. Captivated with London's theatre scene, he went to theatres obsessively: he claimed that for at least three years he went to the theatre every day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews and Dickens learnt his " monopolylogues " (farces in which Mathews played every character) by heart. Then, having learned Gurney 's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become
21666-669: Was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt , to Lamb , to Wordsworth , to Sir Thomas Browne , to Defoe , to Hawthorne , to Montaigne , to Baudelaire and to Obermann . Robert Lewis Stevenson, " Memories and Portraits ", Chapter IV, relating how he practiced writing in his youth Stevenson's critical essays on literature contain "few sustained analyses of style or content". In "A Penny Plain and Two-pence Coloured" (1884) he suggests that his own approach owed much to
21823-431: Was also an author and poet and knew many of the famous writers of the day. After further fraudulent activities, Powell fled to New York and published a book called The Living Authors of England with a chapter on Charles Dickens, who was not amused by what Powell had written. One item that seemed to have annoyed him was the assertion that he had based the character of Paul Dombey ( Dombey and Son ) on Thomas Chapman, one of
21980-605: Was an English novelist , journalist , short story writer and social critic . He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era . His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth , Dickens left school at age 12 to work in
22137-526: Was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark , London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time. Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with
22294-405: Was given. On his death, Dickens settled an annuity on Ternan which made her financially independent. Claire Tomalin 's book The Invisible Woman argues that Ternan lived with Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. The book was turned into a play, Little Nell , by Simon Gray , and a 2013 film . During the same period Dickens furthered his interest in the paranormal becoming one of
22451-561: Was his translation of The Bottle Imp (1891) , which presents a Pacific-wide community as the setting for a moral fable. Immersing himself in the islands' culture, occasioned a "political awakening": it placed Stevenson "at an angle" to the rival great powers , Britain, Germany and the United States whose warships were common sights in Samoan harbours. He understood that, as in the Scottish Highlands (comparisons with his homeland "came readily"), an indigenous clan society
22608-506: Was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated. The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he "found himself a cultural commodity, and its circulation had passed out his control", causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of public and personal personas in the next novels. She writes that he assumed a role of "influential commentator", publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books. His trip to
22765-665: Was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California , where some local ranchers nursed him back to health. He stayed for a time at the French Hotel located at 530 Houston Street, now a museum dedicated to his memory called the " Stevenson House ". While there, he often dined "on the cuff," as he said, at a nearby restaurant run by Frenchman Jules Simoneau, which stood at what is now Simoneau Plaza; several years later, he sent Simoneau an inscribed copy of his novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), writing that it would be
22922-423: Was published between 1849 and 1850. In Dickens's biography, Life of Charles Dickens (1872), John Forster wrote of David Copperfield , "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life". It was Dickens's personal favourite among his novels, as he wrote in the author's preface to the 1867 edition of the novel. His collection of letters included a correspondence with Mary Tyler, dated 6 November 1849, on
23079-737: Was sent to Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went to university. In November 1867, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. From the start he showed no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. This time was more important for the friendships he made with other students in The Speculative Society (an exclusive debating club), particularly with Charles Baxter, who would become Stevenson's financial agent, and with
23236-716: Was so great that he was unable to meet the deadline for the June instalment of The Pickwick Papers and had to cancel the Oliver Twist instalment that month as well. The time in Hampstead was the occasion for a growing bond between Dickens and John Forster to develop; Forster soon became his unofficial business manager and the first to read his work. His success as a novelist continued. The young Queen Victoria read both Oliver Twist and The Pickwick Papers , staying up until midnight to discuss them. Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) and, finally, his first historical novel, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of
23393-513: Was taught by private tutors. In October 1861, aged ten, he went to Edinburgh Academy , an independent school for boys, and stayed there sporadically for about fifteen months. In the autumn of 1863, he spent one term at an English boarding school at Spring Grove in Isleworth in Middlesex (now an urban area of West London). In October 1864, following an improvement to his health, the 13-year-old
23550-423: Was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, learning at age 7 or 8, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse, and he compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father was proud of this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father had found them and had told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business." He paid for
23707-621: Was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist . On 2 April 1836, after a one-year engagement, and between episodes two and three of The Pickwick Papers , Dickens married Catherine Thomson Hogarth (1815–1879), the daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle . They were married in St Luke's Church , Chelsea , London. After a brief honeymoon in Chalk in Kent,
23864-402: Was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of
24021-622: Was this unhappy period in his youth to which he alluded in his favourite, and most autobiographical, novel , David Copperfield : "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" Dickens was eventually sent to the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town , where he remained until March 1827, having spent about two years there. He did not consider it to be
24178-552: Was to last the rest of his life. In 1858, when Dickens was 45 and Ternan 18, divorce would have been scandalous for someone of his fame. After publicly accusing Catherine of not loving their children and suffering from "a mental disorder"—statements that disgusted his contemporaries, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning —Dickens attempted to have Catherine institutionalised . When his scheme failed, they separated. Catherine left, never to see her husband again, taking with her one child. Her sister Georgina, who stayed at Gads Hill, raised
24335-425: Was unprepared for the arrival of foreigners who played upon its existing rivalries and divisions. As the external pressures upon Samoan society grew, tensions soon descended into several inter-clan wars. No longer content to be a "romancer", Stevenson became a reporter and an agitator, firing off letters to The Times which "rehearsed with an ironic twist that surely owed something to his Edinburgh legal training",
24492-524: Was well-known, was asked by his friend, the hospital's founder Charles West , to preside over the appeal, and he threw himself into the task, heart and soul. Dickens's public readings secured sufficient funds for an endowment to put the hospital on a sound financial footing; one reading on 9 February 1858 alone raised £3,000. After separating from Catherine, Dickens undertook a series of popular and remunerative reading tours which, together with his journalism, were to absorb most of his creative energies for
24649-449: Was written in 1879-80 and was not published in full until 1895, one year after his death. In July 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson received word that his future American wife's ( Fanny Vandegrift ) divorce was almost complete and she was ready to remarry, but that she was seriously ill. He left Scotland right away to meet her in her native California. Leaving by ship from Glasgow, Scotland , he determined to travel in steerage class to see how
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