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An excited English gentleman hires a ship for a treasure-hunt, but doesn’t check his crew’s credentials.
When a treasure-map falls into his excited hands, Squire Trelawny can’t wait to go treasure-hunting on distant seas. So he hires a crew of experienced sailors, without asking what kind of ship they gained their experience on...
RL Stevenson was of the opinion that wrongthink was better than groupthink.
In Crabbed Age and Youth, Robert Louis Stevenson argued that we should not try to silence the opinions of the young, however foolish they may seem. He did not pretend that the young are wise and pioneering thinkers. He thought they were mostly thinking nonsense. But it was better to come up with bad answers to good questions than to ask no questions at all.
Shortly after meeting Fanny Osbourne, Robert Louis Stevenson reflected on the different ways in which falling in love affects a man.
In 1876, Robert Louis Stevenson, who was in France for his health, met Fanny Osbourne, an American who was estranged from her serially unfaithful husband, and supporting herself and her two children by writing. For much of the following year Robert remained in France with Fanny, Isobel and Lloyd, and in 1877 published an essay titled ‘On Falling in Love’ in The Cornhill Magazine.
David Balfour hopes his crusty uncle Ebenezer is beginning to soften towards him.
David Balfour’s father has died, leaving him only a letter of introduction to take to his uncle Ebenezer in the grand-sounding House of Shaws in Scotland. Uncle Ebenezer proves to be miserly, and his house cold comfort, but David is willing to make himself useful, and after an unpromising start the old man seems to be coming round.
Jim Hawkins, on a remote desert island, has escaped pirates only to be caught by a shadowy figure among the trees.
Young Jim Hawkins has sailed thousands of miles to a desert island to dig up a king’s ransom in hidden treasure, only to find on arrival that his ship’s crew were all pirates. He has just escaped from them — but now a strange figure emerges from the trees to confront him.
An enduringly popular poem by the author of ‘Treasure Island’.
Robert Louis Stevenson, better known today for ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, first published ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ in 1885. He uses simple rhymes and a ‘rum-ti-tum’ rhythm to create a sense of childhood innocence, though he does not by any means romanticise childhood, and many poems in the set are tinged with sorrow.
The Master and his brother Henry must decide which of them goes to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie.
It is 1745, and James - the Master of Ballantrae - and his younger brother Henry both want to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie. But one of them must stay at home and make peace with King George II, in case he wins, and James suggests a way of deciding who it shall be.