Robert Louis Stevenson

BOOK REVIEWS tuai and moral limitations struck me as shabby. I confess that for me it became a touchstone of sorts to the biography. My point here, finally, is not to exonerate Wells firom his many shortcomings. For me, his thought is as constricted as is any other artist's, then or now, or my own ideas. It would have been nice had Wells been perfect, I suppose, but should we not outgrow such a grudging, childish fantasy of ideal parental figures? Should we not look deeply within ourselves first before we point a finger accusatively from our high rocking-horse of morality? Is it not possible to leam with compassion from some of the mistakes of others, including Wells, as possibly others might learn from some of ours? I hope so. And I also hope that in the meantime it is forgivable to appreciate Wells's artistry, which expresses his thought to be sure but which at its best is always much more than his thought. William J. Scheick University of Texas at Austin Robert Louis Stevenson Frank McLynn. Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Hutchinson, 1993. 567 pp. £20 ACCORDING TO MCLYNNS comprehensive bibliography, to date there have been approximately sixty-seven books on the life, career, and works of Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS), of which about thirty are specifically biographies of this unique literary personality. Having produced lives of such Victorian worthies as Henry Morton Stanley and Sir Richard Burton, in addition to four works on the Jacobites during the eighteenth century, McLynn has turned to RLS whom he ranks as "Scotland's greatest writer of English prose," even exceeding the merit of Sir Walter Scott. In his introduction to this controversial biography, McLynn reviews previous biographical studies of RLS and insists that during the century since his demise in 1894 from a stroke (not tuberculosis ), "his death has not been kind to Stevenson." Immediately after his death in Samoa, works of hagiography, such as Graham Balfour's authorized biography in 1901, portrayed RLS as a "Christ-figure" and Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1896 elevated him to the status of Shakespeare , Milton, Keats, and Dickens in the pantheon of the greats in English literature. Then, in the 1920s, a reaction set in with the studies of J. A. Steuart (1924) and George Hellman (1925) excoriating RLS's wife, Fanny; Frank Swinnerton (1924) debunking RLS for lacking any "central sustaining 363 ELT 37:3 1994 vision"; Thomas Beer (1926) flaying RLS for producing nothing more than "a mixture of bogus bohemianism and picayune juvenilia"; and E. F. Benson (1930) accusing RLS of lacking any feeling "for the sorrows of the world" and being something of a "bounder." McLynn asserts that despite the attempts of J. C. Furnas (1950), James Pope-Hennessey (1974), and Jenni Calder (1980) to rescue the reputation of RLS, he never really recovered from the assaults on his works during the 1920s. Why? Because, says McLynn, of the following "five main aspects of Stevenson's literary productions that have, until recently, militated against a proper adjustment to his literary reputation." First, the impression that RLS was guilty of "stylistic pyrotechnics... of.. literary charlatanism . . . [and] . . . word-juggling fakery," and that he was "no more than an aesthete and poseur," excluded from F. R. Leavis's "Great Tradition" in English literature. Secondly, the popular perception of RLS as a mere "boy's writer ... skimming the surface of life." Thirdly, "the Jamesian prejudice against the adventure story as the proper medium for moral seriousness." Fourthly, RLS's "Romantic Toryism," which often "collides" with the very strong radical tradition in Scotland, and "escapist fantasy." Lastly, the impression that "the high adventure of Stevenson's own life, his globetrotting... tended to make his own life a greater story than any he could devise." McLynn insists that "As an influence himself, Stevenson has been underrated," that his work greatly influenced W. B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and D. H. Lawrence, and that his real literary "heirs" are Joseph Conrad, Jack London, J. M. Barrie, John Buchan, and even George Orwell. RLS, asserts McLynn, "tends to stick in the throat of even those who would like to spit him out"—Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, G...