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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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
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