Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

Author(s): Robert Louis Stevenson

Genre(s): Essays & Short Works

Narrators: Martin Geeson

Number of Chapters: 10

Length: 5 hours and 32 minutes

Language: English

“Extreme busyness…is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.”

What comforting words for the idle among us! Like many of the best essayists, Stevenson is very much the genial fireside companion: opinionated, but never malicious; a marvellous practitioner of the inclusive monologue.

In this collection of nine pieces he discusses the art of appreciating unattractive scenery, traces the complex social life of dogs, and meditates in several essays upon the experience of reading literature and writing it. Perhaps his most personal passages concern death and mortality. Here we meet him at his most undogmatically optimistic, as he affirms a wholesome faith in “the liveableness of Life”.
(Summary by Martin Geeson)