Lay Morals

by Robert Louis Stevenson

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Philosophy

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1911

About the author

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.

Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.

Reviews

[Chris Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stevenson makes some good points in this collections of essays along with some wrong ones. Not all the topics are equally interesting, but there is a good variety of them throughout the book, some more interesting than others. "Lay Morals," the first section and namesake of the books deals primarily with some ethics from a largely secular perspective and backing it up with some commonsensical positions. It is not his greatest work. His real strength is in fiction, not philosophy.