# A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
A BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE WORKS OF
ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
BY
COLONEL W. F. PRIDEAUX, C.S.I.
LONDON
FRANK HOLLINGS
7 GREAT TURNSTILE, HOLBORN
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1903
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
INTRODUCTION
Robert Louis Stevenson entered the field of literature in May 1878, when An Inland Voyage was published; he quitted it in December 1894. In less than seventeen years he produced four volumes of essays, seven romances, five collections of fantastic tales, two of South Sea yarns, three of poetry, five volumes of travel and topography, one of political history, besides leaving material for several posthumous works. With a few exceptions of minor importance, this output of less than a score of years has taken a permanent place in English Literature. Whilst many of his seniors in age are still toiling in the workshop, Stevenson has not only been accepted as a classic, but as the preacher of a gospel which is influencing the most masculine minds of his generation. His personality is so strongly reflected in his works that it is difficult to take up one of his books without feeling oneself captivated by the spell of a personal friendship. The elements of this personality have frequently undergone examination. Analysis upon analysis has been stretched to straining point, and both the friendly and the doubting critic have sought to pierce the recesses of his genius. Not that there is really any ​difficulty in the matter. With a frail and sapless body, Stevenson possessed a singularly healthy mind and a temperament which enabled him to face the ills of life with unflinching courage. Constant ill-health, the frequent apprehension of poverty, and a series of discouragements which far exceeded the ordinary allowance of humanity, were met, at one time with the humorous acquiescence of a Thomas More, at another with a deeper fortitude which threw an answering glove into the face of Destiny. Courage with him was the virtue which all the others presuppose, and it requires little reflection to perceive that superiority to weakness or vice cannot exist without it. It is this quality which runs like a golden thread through his life and work, and which is the secret of his charm. No writer has ever thrown more of himself into his works; no one has illumined his surroundings more vividly with the rays of his individuality; and it would be possible to arrange his essays in an order which would portray his inward and outward life from childhood to middle age.
A discussion of the character of Stevenson is not, however, the task that I have set myself. One could say much upon the strenuous novitiate through which he passed while preparing himself for the duties of authorship, and the discipline in taste which resulted in resenting the intrusion of the valueless word. Too much perhaps has been written about his style, and the image of the 'sedulous ape' has been chased to death. His style, like the style of all great writers, was individual: and, though as a student he saturated ​himself with the essence of the greatest figures in English literature, he was the imitator of none. It would be hard to name a writer of equal eminence whose horizon had a wider range. From Patrick Walker's Biographia Presbyteriana to The History of Notorious Pirates, from Penn's Fruits of Solitude to Les Diaboliques of Barbey d'Aurevilly, there was no extreme which could exceed the measure of his flight.
In compiling a bibliographical essay on any author a twofold object must be kept in view. Firstly, an accurate catalogue of the writer's works must be drawn up in such a manner as to be most useful to the literary student; and secondly, careful collations of the books which are the objects of his search must be placed before the bibliophile, whose aim rarely extends beyond the acquisition of rarities. In the following bibliography, I have endeavoured to meet the views both of the student and of the collector. The first two parts deal with the original editions of Stevenson; in the first I have described those which come within the domain of pure literature, and in the second his juvenile effusions, his Davos toy-books, his privately printed vers d'occasion, and other trifles much considered in the auction rooms. In the third, fourth, and fifth parts are included his contributions to books and periodicals, and here I feel that I stand in need of indulgence. No effort has ​been wanting on my part to gather together these fallen leaves, but I am conscious that many must have been swept out of sight or wafted away on the breezes of oblivion. I have been especially anxious to discover the truth of the story which alleges that Stevenson did work for the Californian press during his visit to the United States in 1879–80, of which a partial description is given in The Amateur Emigrant. According to Mr. Graham Balfour, 'he made inquiries about work on the San Francisco Bulletin, but the payment offered by that newspaper for literary articles, which were all he was ready to undertake, was too small to be of any use to a writer so painstaking and so deliberate. The Bulletin afterwards accepted at its own rates a couple of papers which he had not written specially for it, but his connection with the San Francisco press was absolutely limited to this transaction.' On seeking particulars from Mr. Lloyd Osbourne regarding the articles in question, I received the following reply, which, notwithstanding the circumstantial nature of Mr. Balfour's information, appears to me to set at rest the question of Stevenson's connection with the San Francisco press:—
'In reply to your letter of February 26th, I regret to say that I can be but of negative service to you. Mr. Stevenson never contributed anything to the San Francisco Bulletin or any other San Francisco paper. Not from any pride about journalism, etc., but due to the fact that in those days local pay was derisory. He actually offered an article on "The Fourth of July in America" to several of the papers, but would not accept the ​absurd terms they offered him—£3 or £4 for 10,000 words! His work, such as it was, on the Monterey paper, was more of a joke than anything else, and done to oblige the editor, for whom he had a strong regard. I believe it extended no further than some small news items, etc., of the reportorial kind.
'I have had so often the occasion to contradict the statement that Stevenson worked for the San Francisco press—statements often of great particularity—that I should be grateful to have you give them the lie altogether.'
With regard to the Monterey paper, of which Mr. Osbourne speaks, it will be remembered that in a letter to Mr. Edmund Gosse, dated November 15, 1879, Stevenson wrote that he was sending a copy to that gentleman, giving at the same time a humorous résumé of the manner in which his life could become clear through a study of the advertisements. Unfortunately, as Mr. Gosse informs me, this paper was lost in the post in its passage from California, and no record seems to be in existence of the articles which as a reporter, on a salary of two dollars a week, Stevenson contributed to The Monterey Californian.
In The Book-Buyer (New York), xii. 497, it is stated that 'Mr. Stevenson wrote two letters to The Evening Post, which were printed in 1887 and 1888. One of them was a description of Dr. E. L. Trudeau's sanatorium in the Adirondacks, and an appeal for subscriptions for its maintenance; another had to do with Father Damien.' Through the medium of some zealous and warm-hearted friends in ​America, I have endeavoured to ascertain the exact titles and dates of these papers, but without success. So far they are not discoverable either in the New York Evening Post nor in The Nation.
I also feel regret that I have been unable to definitely lay my hand on any of the articles, which, according to Mr. Sidney Colvin, Stevenson contributed to Vanity Fair in 1876. A search has been made through the files of this journal, but though some articles—notably one printed in May 1875 on Salvini's 'Othello'—appear to bear the impress of the well-known hand, there is not one which can be conclusively attributed to it.
The books and papers that are noted in the Appendix are but a selection from the limitless literature that has gathered round Robert Louis Stevenson. Many omissions will doubtless be noted. I have indeed hardly gone farther afield than my own library, in which I have preserved all the articles on Stevenson which seemed to me to have a special interest, either of a literary or a biographical nature. Anonymous reviews of his books in the weekly or daily press I have as a rule excluded. Some well-chosen quotations from the best of these reviews will be found in Mr. John Foster Kirk's Supplement to Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature, 1891, ii. 1387–89. Generally speaking, the articles which bear on the life-history of the author seem to me to have the greatest value, and these are pretty fully represented. Some which I have read ​have been unable to locate. One of these appeared not long after his death in an American or Australian paper, it contained a graphic description of the life Stevenson lived at Butaritari, one of the Gilbert Group, during the summer and autumn of 1889, when staying with Captain and Mrs. Rick. This episode in Stevenson's life was only ightly touched upon in his letters from the South Seas.
The critical articles are interesting on account of their writers, for no one has graduated in letters who has not taken Stevenson for his theme.
'Of all the dresses I select Haidée's,'
and if one must own to a preference, I am compelled to express the pleasure which a perusal of Sir Leslie Stephen's paper in The National Review gave me. A fellow-feeling is not without its influence in these cases. 'I am hopelessly unable to appreciate Walt Whitman, and Treasure Island is the one story which I can admire without the least qualificaion or reserve.' But while thankful for the illumination thrown on the subject by so many lights, I still feel that the last word remains to be said. A writer of exactly similar temperament to Stevenson does not often arise, but until such a writer takes him in hand, I doubt if his character will be understood to the depths. We want some one who will treat him as Baudelaire treated Poe, or as Stevenson might have treated Baudelaire. It is a pity that the petits poëmes en prose, which according to Mr. Sidney Colvin were attempts ​in the form, though not in the spirit, of Baudelaire, never survived. I suspect that these prose poems might have been more in the spirit of Baudelaire than Mr. Colvin is willing to allow. The author of Le Voyage, at any rate, often wrote in the spirit of Stevenson.
In compiling a bibliography of the finished works of any writer, it is impossible to leave out of sight those which were projected, or if begun, failed to reach completion. One of these has always had a fascination for me. Students of Keats will remember that in writing to his sister-in-law on January 17, 1820, the poet mentioned that he and his friends 'had a young, long, raw, lean Scotchman with us yesterday, called Thornton. Rice, for fun or for mistake, would persist in calling him Stevenson.' Little could this unconscious prophet have dreamt that nearly sixty years later the heart of a young, long, raw, lean Scotchman, called Stevenson, would 'leap at the thought' of joining in a literary scheme of which Keats was to have been the central subject. That scheme unluckily never came to fruition. Stevenson admitted that he was not a keen partisan, 'and to write a good book you must be.' But in regard to Keats, his partisanship was strongly pronounced. Whether in his Scottish home, or among the islands of the Pacific, his thoughts always reverted to Endymion whenever Nature presented a beautiful scene before his eyes. Nor was he in his methods of work less under the influence of his favourite poet. A book on Keats by Stevenson would have been a good book.
Three of his fragments, The Great North Road, The Young ​Chevalier, and Heathercat, have been printed in the 'Edinburgh Edition,' and there are no materials from which to add to the bibliographical information given regarding them by Mr. Colvin and Mr. Lang. But the Letters and the Life are full of allusions to other projected works round which the lightning mind of Stevenson played for a shorter or longer period. Essays on Benjamin Franklin and the Art of Virtue, on William Penn, on Three Sea Fortalices, the two Mounts of St. Michael and the Bass Rock; biographies of Hazlitt and the Duke of Wellington; fantastic stories like those included in The Black Man or Tales for Winter Nights; longer tales like The Hair Trunk; or, The Ideal Commonwealth, of which the manuscript is still in existence; romances like A Vendetta in the West or Jerry Abershaw, Sophia Scarlet or The Shovels of Newton French; a dozen plays planned in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley; all of these engaged the mind of Stevenson at various dates, and prove the range and versatility of his fancy.
In conclusion, I must express my obligations to various friends who have assisted me in the compilation of this book: to Mr. Thomas J. Wise, whose materials for a Bibliography of Stevenson were generously placed at my disposal; to Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, Mr. W. B. Blaikie, Mr. George M. Williamson, and Mr. W. MacDonald Mackay; to Mrs. Katherine de Mattos, Mrs. iMargaret Hamilton McElroy, and Miss Carolyn Shipman, to all of whom I am indebted for valuable information; to Mr. W. C. Beetonson, who has assisted me in the collation ​and description of various entries; and lastly, to the various publishers of Mr. Stevenson's works: Messrs. Cassell and Co., Limited, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co., Mr. William Heinemann, and Mr. David Nutt, who have ungrudgingly furnished me with all the particulars that I required regarding the works which are respectively under their control.
* ↑ I have not cared to swell the bulk of the book by inserting collations of anthologies, etc., which contain previously published poems of Stevenson. Such works as Mr. Henley's Lyra Heroica Living English Poets have no bibliographical value.
* ↑ Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, i. 170.
* ↑ Letters to his Family and Friends, i. 157, 158.
* ↑ Letters to his Family and Friends, i. 101.
CONTENTS
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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