|
Robert Louis Stevenson's Literary Network
 J.M. Barrie Licensed by Creative Commons"So Mr Stevenson puzzles the critics, fascinating them until they are willing to judge him by the magnum opus he is to write by and by when the little books are finished. Over Treasure Island I let my fire die in winter without knowing that I was freezing. But the creator of Alan Breck has now published nearly twenty volumes. It is so much easier to finish the little works than to begin the great one, for which we are all taking notes. Mr Stevenson is not to be labeled novelist. He wanders the byways of literature without any fixed address"
(J.M Barrie, "Robert Louis Stevenson", British Weekly, vol 9 [2 November 1888])
James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He studied at the University of Edinburgh before briefly becoming a journalist. His first novel was The Little Minister (1891). Although the work met with a poor critical reception, Barrie was popular with the general public, publishing works like Sentimental Tommy (1896), Margaret Ogilvy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902).
Barrie was particularly interested in writing for the theatre. He wrote plays like The Admirable Crichton (1902) and What Every Woman Knows (1906).
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 Arthur Conan Doyle Licensed by Creative CommonsFrom RLS, 5 April 1893, to Arthur Conan Doyle:
"I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. That is the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache. As a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the moment effectual"
Doyle responded:
"I'm so glad Sherlock Holmes helped to pass an hour for you. He's a bastard between Joe Bell [a famous Edinburgh surgeon] and Poe's Monsieur Dupin (much diluted). I trust that I may never write a word about him again. I had rather that you knew me by my White Company. I'm sending it on the chance that you have not seen it".
(Correspondence between RLS and Arthur Conan Doyle, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol viii [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], pp. 49-50)
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a Scottish novelist. He is best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). His fictional detective was based on Dr Joseph Bell (1837-1911) a professor at Edinburgh University (who both RLS and Conan Doyle knew).
|
|
Read more...
|
 Thomas Hardy Licensed by Creative Commons"Well, I was mortually wounded by Tess of the Durberfields. I do not know that I am exaggerative in criticism; but I will say Tess is one of the worst, the weakest, least sane, most volulu books I have yet read [. . .] I could never finish it, there may be the treasures of the Indies further on; but so far as I read, James, it was (in one word) damnable. Not alive, not true, was my continual comment as I read, and at last - not even honest! was the verdict with which I spewed it from my mouth. I write in anger? I almost think I do; I was betrayed in a friend's house - and I was pained to hear that other friends delighted in the barmecide feast. I cannot read a page of Hardy for many a long day, my confidence is gone. So that you and Barrie and Kipling are now my Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know, there are reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don't write enough"
(Letter from RLS to Henry James, 4 December 1892, The Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol vii [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 450)
"Did I tell you that we saw Hardy the novelist at Dorchester? A pale, gentle, frightened little man, that one felt an instinctive tenderness for, with a wife - ugly is no word for it, who said 'whatever shall we do?' I had never heard a living being say it before"
(Letter from Fanny Stevenson to Margaret Stevenson, 10 September 1885, The Collected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol v [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 125)
|
|
Read more...
|
 Henry James Licensed by Creative Commons"I meant to write to you tonight on another matter - but of what can one think, or utter or dream, save of this ghastly extinction of the beloved R.L.S? It is too miserable for cold words - it's an absolute desolation. It makes me cold and sick - and with the absolute, almost alarmed sense, of the visible, material, quenching of an indispensable light"
(Letter from Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 17 December 1894. From Letters, ed. by Leon Edel, vol iii [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974-84], p. 495)
Henry James (1843-1916) was an American novelist and close friend to RLS. Some of his most notable works are Daisy Miller (1878), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Turn of the Screw (1898), The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Ambassadors (1903). He often wrote from the point of view of his characters, and his innovative style, using unreliable narrators and interior monologues, strongly influenced modernist writing. Although mostly known for his realist fiction, James also wrote literary criticism, plays, works on travel writing, biographical and autobiographical works.
James was born in New York City. He studied law at Harvard University , but like RLS, he wanted to be a writer and focused instead on his literary ambitions. Although an American, James felt that he identified more with Europe. Indeed, he was preoccupied with national identity. Much of his writing centers on what happens in the meeting between American and European cultures. In the end, James’s life seemed to suggest that national identity is a choice – he settled in England in 1876 and became a British citizen in 1915.
|
|
Read more...
|
 George Meredith Licensed by Creative Commons"Adieu. I trust you are well. Look to health. Run to no excess in writing or in anything. I hope you will feel that we expect much of you"
(Letter from Meredith to RLS on 4 June 1878 regarding An Inland Voyage. From Letters of George Meredith, ed. by C.L.Cline [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970], pp. 559-61).
George Meredith (1828-1909) was an English novelist and poet. He is best known for novels like The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885). He was also a reader for the publishers Chapman and Hall, reading and suggesting manuscripts for publication. In this capacity he introduced the reading public to George Gissing (1857-1903) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
In 1849 Meredith made an unhappy marriage to Mary Ellen Nicolls. The couple had one child, Arthur (1853-1890). Mary Ellen left Meredith in 1858 for the artist Henry Wallis (1830-1916) and died in 1861. In 1864, Meredith made a second, and more successful marriage. He and his new wife, Marie Vulliamy, settled in Flint Cottage, Box Hill, Dorking. They had two children, William (b. 1865) and Mariette (b. 1874). Marie died of cancer in 1885, and RLS sent the grieving Meredith a condolence letter.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
