Dreams of Elsewhere: The Selected Travel Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson, June Skinner Sawyers (Editor), Gavin Bell (Preface)

Dreams of Elsewhere brings together Stevenson's best travel writings, including: An Inland Voyage (1878), an account of the journey he made by canoe from Antwerp to northern France, and his companion work to this, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), shadowing his life as his ill health took him from Scotland to Europe, America, and finally to Samoa, where he died.

329 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

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

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who knew Robert Louis Stevenson, of Treasure Island fame, was a brilliant travel writer? In fact, he loved the excitement of exploration and discovery and was happiest when he was on the move. In Dreams of Elsewhere, a collection of excerpts from his numerous travel memoirs, you receive an intimate understanding of who he was and how his travels affected him. I enjoyed his accounts of early Monterey, California and surrounds in the late 1800’s the most, but his South seas impressions are also insightful. The language is dense and archaic for most modern readers, but powerful none the less. He said “A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you.” My sentiments exactly!Lost Angel Walkabout