Thus I lived with words
Subtitle: Robert Louis Stevenson and the writer's craft
By: Annette R. Federico
Series: Muse books, the Iowa series in creativity and writing; Muse books
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Iowa City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 136
ISBN-13: 9781609385187; 9781609385194
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; Authorship; Literary style; Values in literature; Scottish Authors; Biography; LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Composition & Creative Writing; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary
Other titles: Robert Louis Stevenson and the writer's craft
Description: "Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) loved more than anything to talk about the craft of writing and the pleasure of reading good books. His dedication to the creative impulse manifests itself in the extraordinary amount of work he produced in virtually every literary genre--fiction, poetry, travel writing, and essays--in a short and peripatetic life. His letters, especially, confess his elation at the richness of words and the companionship of books, often projected against ill health and the shadow of his own mortality. Stevenson belonged to a newly commercial literary world, an era of mass readership, marketing, and celebrity. He had plenty of practical advice for writers who wanted to enter the profession: study the best authors, aim for simplicity, strike a keynote, work on your style. He also held that a writer should adhere to the truth and utter only what seems sincere to his or her heart and experience of the world. Writers have messages to deliver, whether the work is a tale of Highland adventure, a collection of children's verse, or an essay on umbrellas. Stevenson believed that an author could do no better than to find the appetite for joy, the secret place of delight that is the hidden nucleus of most people's lives. His remarks on how to write, on style and method, and on pleasure and moral purpose contain everything in literature and life that he cared most about--adventuring, persisting, finding out who you are, and learning to embrace "the romance of destiny.""--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: R.L.S.; title: Romance; title: Play; title: Simplicity; title: Reading; title: Truth; title: Teaching; title: Style; title: Dreams.