In the centenary year of his death, one of the best letter writers in English receives his due in the hands of Stevenson authorities Booth (d. 1968) and Mehew. Eight volumes of letters will be published, restoring more than twice as many to print as we'd had heretofore. The first two volumes find Stevenson focusing on a quartet of correspondents: his mother; his artist cousin, Bob Stevenson; his friend Sidney Colvin, an art historian; and Mrs. Francis Sitwell (Stevenson's muse, with whom he had relations that seem to have veered close to the carnal, then off to the maternal). Stevenson disappoints his father by rejecting both a career in engineering and the family's orthodox Scotch Calvinism. Then, while recovering from illness (due in part, no doubt, to stress) on the French Riviera, he begins writing in earnest—first sketches, then essays, and finally tales. He's admitted to the Scottish bar (mostly to mollify his parents), but literary life leaves him no taste for the law, which he lets languish. On a visit to the Continent he meets his eventual wife, Fanny Osbourne, of Oakland, Calif. Stevenson's youthful letters to his mother may be the most remarkable of all- -travel notes, with every color of a sky and angle of a slope recorded: ``At the north of town stands Fort Charlotte, founded, as I hear, by Cromwell. It overhangs the water with a circuit of heavy grass grown walls, backed by mounds supported by ruinous buttresses and pierced by some four arched gateways. The sea-pink blooms thickly among the lichened crevices of the old stonework.'' With an admittedly ``elastic'' temper, his lows are low but never stiffen into a pose: ``On red-letter days, I manage to get enough excitement for a tolerably happy life.'' To read Stevenson gaining confidence in his art is to understand the humble yet unerring precision that invests all of his great fiction so memorably.
Pub Date: July 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-06023-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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