From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson's life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction
Best of 2025 Lists: Wall Street Journal, Top 10 - Economist - Times Literary Supplement - Air Mail, Top 10 - Christian Science Monitor, Top 25 - Washington Post, Notable Works of Nonfiction - Literary Hub, "Ultimate Best Books" - World Today Journal, Top 25
"Damrosch brings to Stevenson's life the calm, humane interpretive powers that he deployed with such success in . . . The Club. . . . [An] excellent book."--Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with "smoldering rich fire." Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. "I loved a ship," he wrote, "as a man loves burgundy or daybreak." The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific.
Samoan friends named Stevenson "Storyteller." Reading, he said, "should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves." His own books have been translated into dozens of languages. Jorge Luis Borges called his stories "one of the forms of happiness," and other modernist masters as various as Proust, Nabokov, and Calvino have paid tribute to his greatness as a literary artist.
In Storyteller, Leo Damrosch brings to life an unforgettable personality, illuminated by many who knew Stevenson well and drawing from thousands of the writer's letters in his many voices and moods--playful, imaginative, at times tragic.
"A captivating, elegantly written biography. . . . Squanto is the first book for adult readers on this intriguing figure in early American history."--Melanie Kirkpatrick, Wall Street Journal
"Native American history . . . has been revised and distorted for centuries. The story of Squanto, the Pilgrims, and the first Thanksgiving is a prime example. Lipman's book is a step toward amending that. . . . [A] revelatory biography and social history."--Katherine A. Powers, Washington Post
"A balanced, thoughtful blend of biography and history."-- Kirkus Reviews
A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Economist
Listed in Washington Post's "50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2025"
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2025
A World Today Journal Top 25 Book of 2025
Named a Top 25 Book of 2025 by Christian Science Monitor
Named to Literary Hub's "Ultimate Best Books of 2025 List"
Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His many books include Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (National Book Award finalist); Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova; The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age; and Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist). He lives in Newton, MA.