Description of Event:
For all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s achievements in fiction, many of his contemporaries thought of him primarily as an essayist. His essays, known for their intellectual substance, emotional force, and stylistic vitality, were widely considered the best of their time. Despite the importance of Stevenson’s nonfiction, his personal essays—seventy in total—have never been printed together in a single volume until now. This volume gathers his personal essays, many of which have never appeared in any modern edition, in their authorized versions. These essays are still considered classic models of the form, and in this volume, the Editor presents them alongside an introduction and notes to assist in a rereading and reappreciation that is long overdue.
Choose your own price for non-members. Free for MTH&M and community members.
Copies of The Complete Personal Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson are available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so.
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About the Editor:
Trenton B. Olsen, PhD is an associate professor of English at Brigham Young University-Idaho, editor of The Complete Personal Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson, and president of the Stevenson Society of America (est. 1915), which owns and operates the Stevenson Cottage Museum in Saranac Lake, New York. He lives with his family in Idaho’s Teton Valley.
About the Moderator:
Steve Courtney has been a journalist for forty years, largely at the Hartford Courant, and won the 2009 Connecticut Book Award for Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend. He is also the author of The Loveliest Home That Ever Was: The Story of the Mark Twain House in Hartford and many other books. He has been both publicist and Curatorial Special Projects Coordinator at The Mark Twain House & Museum, where he founded the museum’s Writing Program and Twainian lecture series, “The Trouble Begins.”
