He was the J.K. Rowling of his day, writing sprightly, adventure-driven, insanely popular books ostensibly aimed at kids but which sober and responsible adults — if backed against a wall with the cold tip of a pirate’s cutlass jammed against their throats — would admit to enjoying, too, as much if not more so than the urchins.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is best known for tales such as “Treasure Island” (1883), “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1886) and “Kidnapped” (1886), along with the poetry collection “A Child’s Garden of Verses” (1885), but like every great author, he was always more — and other — than he seemed, always restless and dynamic, always surprising his readers and, as we know from his private letters, himself as well. His works spilled over the narrow channels of the genres in which critics tried to confine them. Yes, many of his stories were swashbuckling tales that girls and boys adored — but they were also acute psychological investigations and nuanced character studies. Stevenson’s books, then, were like his thoughts: “The mind,” he wrote to a friend shortly before his death, “runs ever in a thousand eddies like a river between cliffs.”
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And now we can add a new tributary: writing teacher.
The current issue of The Strand (strandmag.com), the mystery magazine published in Birmingham, Mich., includes a previously unpublished essay by Stevenson. Titled “How Books Have to Be Written,” it shows the author reveling in his role as creative writing professor, advising young scribes that “the first objective of books is to afford us a pleasant change,” while the second is to enable readers to “learn something about the world.” The essay has a sweet and beautiful rhythm to it, a kind of casual, singsong wisdom, and while his advice may sound obvious, note that his to-do list for imaginative works does not include the self-expression of the author or any incitement to political or social change. Stevenson makes a strong case for the most basic role of storytelling: Writers should entertain. Writers should enthrall. Writers should provide a plausible escape from reality, as well as additional information about that reality to help one cope with its rigors and whims.
But writers are not the only ones who should heed Stevenson’s words, says Andrew Gulli, managing editor of The Strand.
“His essay is very good advice for writers, but it’s very good advice for readers, too,” Gulli notes. “He’s instructing people how to read critically.”
By releasing the Stevenson essay for the first time, Gulli is indulging in what has become a Strand specialty: finding and publishing forgotten works by well-known authors. In previous issues, the magazine has rescued and shared lost stories and essays by the likes of Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett and Mark Twain.
The Strand, with a circulation of approximately 47,000, is a contemporary incarnation of a magazine with a famous pedigree. The Strand was published in Great Britain from 1891 to 1950. It was the venue in which Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced readers to a detective named Sherlock Holmes. Vastly popular, hugely influential, The Strand routinely published authors such as H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, P.G. Wodehouse and Winston Churchill.
Like many once-flourishing magazines, however, The Strand was unable to make the transition to the modern era and ceased publication in 1950. Forty-eight years later, Gulli — a passionate fan of great mystery authors and a mystery author himself — helped resurrect the publication in the United States.
The Stevenson essay is close to his heart, Gulli says. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be in publishing. He and Agatha Christie were my greatest influences.” As a child, Gulli was captivated by a TV miniseries based on Stevenson’s novel “Kidnapped,” he recalls. His father bought him the book and the enthrallment intensified. “I’d go up to adults and say, ‘Have you read Robert Louis Stevenson?’ He was a hero to me.”
The Stevenson essay in The Strand is a delight to read. It exudes a cheerful, amiable air and never sounds hectoring or pedantic — but its essential good sense and solid practicality shine through. “The whole art of a writer is to leave things out. … This is the reason why the lives we read about seem so much more exciting than the lives we lead,” Stevenson explains. “The writer has left all the dullness out. He has skipped the days when his hero was merely attending to his business, and jumped from one adventure clean over to the next.”
Adventure — in golden heaps and glittering piles, like the contents of a treasure chest — was what Stevenson poured in the world’s palm through his fiction. He wrote about one-legged pirates and two-souled men, about death-defying feats of bravery and backstabbing acts of cowardice and calumny, about grisly ghosts and midnight horrors and supernatural dabblings — so much so that his patient literary artistry often was overshadowed by his galloping, grab-you-by-the-lapels plots.
In “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” here is how he describes the atmosphere of night-draped London as two gentlemen prepare to share a glass of wine: “The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London.”
Like Rowling, Stevenson used seemingly light-hearted sagas for young people as a means of approaching the darkness of the real world, the world where good and evil are locked in an eternal duel for the prize of human souls. With language that was evocative, playful, sometimes melodramatic but always fresh and exciting, Stevenson wrote to be read, and the essence of his advice to young writers is similarly simple, vivid and exhilarating: Clasp your pen firmly. Go forth boldly. Literature, like life, is a great adventure.
Julia Keller‘s 2012 novel “A Killing in the Hills” will be published in paperback June 11. Her next novel, “Bitter River,” will be published in September.
Five fetching books on how to write
Once you’ve digested the writing advice of Robert Louis Stevenson in the current issue of The Strand, here are five other sources of wisdom and inspiration for literary practitioners from blessedly know-it-all scribes:
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (1990)
Crack, boom, bang: That’s the sound that emanates from this luminous volume, as the late sci-fi author’s invigorating ideas on creativity sizzle and pop.
Write Mind by Eric Maisel (2002)
Simple but profound aphorisms that will banish writer’s block lickety-split. This is a practical, down-to-earth remedy for anyone who’s agonized over a first draft or a last paragraph.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King (2000)
A raw, honest and hypnotically fascinating look at the extraordinary mind of a prolific creative genius. Part autobiography, part swift kick in the pants to procrastinating writers.
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg (1999)
Like her popular novels, these chapters feature the earnest, funny voice of a good and supportive friend who just happens to be a best-selling author.
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard (1989)
Mystical, infused with wonder and awe, this work serves as a meditation on creativity and the endless splendors of the natural world.
