RLS in Love makes a powerful argument for recognising Stevenson as a love poet. This unique anthology reveals a restless man constantly struggling with love and lust, invariably attracted to unobtainable or unsuitable partners, including distant relatives, older married women, servants and prostitutes. The poems are organised to reflect the three main stages in Stevenson’s emotional life: his late adolescence and early manhood characterised by a succession of trysts in the woods and dells of the Pentland hills, and encounters with working women in the Old Town brothels; his passionate but doomed relationship with Fanny Sitwell; and finally the troubled, infuriating but often ecstatic emotional journey with his wife.
Buy the Book:Amazon
Excerpt
TO FANNY STEVENSON
(Verse for her birthday - 1887)
What can I wish, what can I promise, dear,
To make you gladder in the coming year?
I wish you – if I could promise too! –
A kinder husband than you ever knew.
Reviews
"In his notes, Campbell makes many good points and does not hesitate to point out what he sees as the occasional weakness."
The Scotsman
Title: RLS in Love: The love poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson
Add on Goodreads
Published by: Sandstone Press
Release Date: 15/07/2009
Pages: 180
Contributors: Robert Louis Stevenson
ISBN13: 9781905207282