What do you think?
Rate this book
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction
“This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smoldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,” he wrote, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.
Samoan friends named Stevenson “Storyteller.” Reading, he said, “should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.” His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories “one of the forms of happiness,” and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.
In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods—playful, imaginative, at times tragic.
“This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smoldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,” he wrote, “as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.” The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.
Samoan friends named Stevenson “Storyteller.” Reading, he said, “should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.” His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories “one of the forms of happiness,” and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.
In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer’s letters in his many voices and moods—playful, imaginative, at times tragic.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
834 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 2, 2025
63 people are currently reading
598 people want to read
About the author
Leo Damrosch
20 books112 followersLeo Damrosch is an American author and professor. In 2001, he was named the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University.[1] He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His areas of academic specialty include Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Puritanism.[1] Damrosch's "The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus" is one of the most important recent explorations of the early history of the Society of Friends. His Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005) was a National Book Award finalist for nonfiction and winner of the 2006 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for best work of nonfiction. Among his other books are "Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth" (1980), "God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding" (1985), "Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson" (1987), and "Tocqueville's Discovery of America" (2010).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 30, 2025
I can only admire the work of the biographer who manages to read through and dominate a whole sea of documents in a few years and then selects and orders information into a history and study of a life. In this case, Damrosch has left eighteenth-century British writers (about whom he has written several books and whose archives and secondary works he knows very well) and has bravely tackled a different century and type of writer.
His biography of Stevenson is notable for various reasons: 1. he quotes a range of other biographers to create an idea of the subject (Stevenson, the other significant players and critical moments) seen from different angles; 2. he quotes extensively from the essays and letters to illustrate Stevenson's world-view; 3. the organization, the division into chapters and short sections, is masterful; 4. he tells the story well and keeps up the narrative tension.
There are aspects open to criticism: 1. there are occasional factual errors (of the type 'Fonatinebleau is north of Paris' when it is south); 2. the narrative is of Stevenson's attainment of his familiar works, with the essays ignored as an aspect of his achievement, and other works dismissed in a few disparaging words: Travels with a Donkey ('reviewers were not reassured'), The New Arabian Nights ('completely overshadowed by Louis's later achievements), The Master of Ballantrae ('fails to deliver on its promises'), Prince Otto (written 'to appeal to the market'), The Ebb-Tide ('disappointing'), The Bottle Imp [summarized as 'A young Hawaiian couple fall in love, manage to get rid of the bottle in time and live happily ever after']); 3. it is possible to question some of his interpretations of motives and occasional unquestioning acceptance of testimony written decades after the events—the first comes into the area of common differences of opinion about others, the second perhaps a fault in the historian and biographer. To balance this last comment, most discussions of motives and marshaling of witness testimony is done well—only occasionally I did not agree (and that is perhaps inevitable).
But on balance, one can only admire the achievement: in particular, the skill of narration and organization and the mastery of many secondary sources. There will always be errors, and differences of approach and opinion are the privilege of each individual. I finished the volume with a sense of pleasure at being transported easily over interesting and varied terrain by a kind (if very occasionally inaccurate) guide. (But no-one is perfect.)
His biography of Stevenson is notable for various reasons: 1. he quotes a range of other biographers to create an idea of the subject (Stevenson, the other significant players and critical moments) seen from different angles; 2. he quotes extensively from the essays and letters to illustrate Stevenson's world-view; 3. the organization, the division into chapters and short sections, is masterful; 4. he tells the story well and keeps up the narrative tension.
There are aspects open to criticism: 1. there are occasional factual errors (of the type 'Fonatinebleau is north of Paris' when it is south); 2. the narrative is of Stevenson's attainment of his familiar works, with the essays ignored as an aspect of his achievement, and other works dismissed in a few disparaging words: Travels with a Donkey ('reviewers were not reassured'), The New Arabian Nights ('completely overshadowed by Louis's later achievements), The Master of Ballantrae ('fails to deliver on its promises'), Prince Otto (written 'to appeal to the market'), The Ebb-Tide ('disappointing'), The Bottle Imp [summarized as 'A young Hawaiian couple fall in love, manage to get rid of the bottle in time and live happily ever after']); 3. it is possible to question some of his interpretations of motives and occasional unquestioning acceptance of testimony written decades after the events—the first comes into the area of common differences of opinion about others, the second perhaps a fault in the historian and biographer. To balance this last comment, most discussions of motives and marshaling of witness testimony is done well—only occasionally I did not agree (and that is perhaps inevitable).
But on balance, one can only admire the achievement: in particular, the skill of narration and organization and the mastery of many secondary sources. There will always be errors, and differences of approach and opinion are the privilege of each individual. I finished the volume with a sense of pleasure at being transported easily over interesting and varied terrain by a kind (if very occasionally inaccurate) guide. (But no-one is perfect.)
December 31, 2025
Interesting and well-researched, "Storyteller" takes the reader through the many phases of Robert Louis Stevenson's life, with attention paid to his writings. It took a long time for Stevenson to hit his full power as a novelist, with works like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, still read today, though often unfairly dismissed as children's books. Damrosch cites critics at the time in praising the spareness of Stevenson's style, never describing the details of a scene, but rather describing how the scene felt to the characters, bringing the action and setting to life. The book slowed a bit with the move to Samoa, with more information about governance of the island nation that I found interesting, but overall a very satisfying biography.
October 14, 2025
Comparatively recent work on retrieving Stevenson’s letters has enabled Damrosch to re-create the flavor of Stevenson’s mind through direct quotation … Despite illness and misdiagnosis, his life was seasoned with adventure just like his most beloved works … This magnificent biography encourages their re-reading … absolutely stellar …
November 28, 2025
Another triumph from Leo Damrosch. Author of great literary biographies on The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch, Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova, and Eternity's Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake, the reader enters the world of adventure with Robert Louis Stevenson, a popular author who died far too young but left a large imprint.
Born into the highly literate world of Edinburgh, but also outside of the literary mainstream, RLS lived a life of adventure like his own tales. He was never fated to live to old age as he developed consumption (tuberculosis) and married a woman who was mistreated by her husband. He met his end in the Pacific islands on Samoa, worshipped by those who knew him and highly revered by no less a writer than Henry James. We remember him for Jekyll and Hyde, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. For that alone, we should be grateful.
Damrosch always gets to the heart of the matter and he does here. Beautifully illustrated and a pleasure to read, I couldn't recommend this book more for those interested in an author whose star burned brightly and fiercely and left a long trail of illumination. Well done, RLS and well done, Mr. Damrosch.
Born into the highly literate world of Edinburgh, but also outside of the literary mainstream, RLS lived a life of adventure like his own tales. He was never fated to live to old age as he developed consumption (tuberculosis) and married a woman who was mistreated by her husband. He met his end in the Pacific islands on Samoa, worshipped by those who knew him and highly revered by no less a writer than Henry James. We remember him for Jekyll and Hyde, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. For that alone, we should be grateful.
Damrosch always gets to the heart of the matter and he does here. Beautifully illustrated and a pleasure to read, I couldn't recommend this book more for those interested in an author whose star burned brightly and fiercely and left a long trail of illumination. Well done, RLS and well done, Mr. Damrosch.
December 19, 2025
As far as I can remember, I’ve never read a book by RLS. But, that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying this biography. In fact as the author desired, it has made me want to read some of his stories.
November 5, 2025
Great resource!
Read
January 9, 2026What an interesting life.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews