An Inland Voyage, 1878 Read the Virtual Book Summary An Inland Voyage recounts a canoe trip Stevenson and his friend Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson made in 1876. Setting out from Antwerp, Stevenson (in the Arethusa) and Simpson (in the Cigarette) paddled through Belgium and France along canals and the Oise River. Much of the travelogue [...]

Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, 1878 Read the Virtual Book Summary Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes is a series of essays describing different areas of Edinburgh: the Old Town, the Parliament Close, Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, the New Town, the villas in Morningside, Calton Hill and the Pentlands. Stevenson discusses how Edinburgh is a doubled city of contrasts often placed one [...]

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, 1879 Travels with a Donkey describes Stevenson’s hiking trip in the Cevennes, in South-Central France. The narrative largely focuses on Stevenson’s humorous descriptions of his stubborn travel companion, Modestine the donkey. Stevenson bought Modestine to carry his belongings for the journey. However, Modestine walks so slowly that Stevenson [...]

The Silverado Squatters, 1884 Read the Virtual Book Summary On 22 May 1880, RLS and Fanny Stevenson left for their honeymoon in the Napa Valley region of California (accompanied by Fanny’s son Lloyd Osbourne). Stevenson later described their travels in Silverado Squatters. In Calistoga RLS uses a telephone for the first time. He also visits [...]

Songs of Travel and Other Verses, 1895 Read the Virtual Book Songs of Travel and Other Verses Contents I. The Vagabond—Give to me the life I love; II. Youth and Love: i.—Once only by the garden gate; III. Youth and Love: ii.—To the heart of youth the world is a highwayside; IV. In dreams, unhappy, [...]

Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays, 1892 Read the Virtual Book Across the Plains Contents "Epilogue to An Inland Voyage" (1888) "The Lantern Bearers" (1888) "A Chapter on Dreams" (1888) "Beggars" (1888) "Contributions to the History of Fife: Random Memories" (1888) "The Education of an Engineer: More Random Memories" (1888) "Across the Plains: Leaves [...]

The Amateur Emigrant, 1895 Read the Virtual Book Summary Stevenson’s journey to late nineteenth-century America was an immersion course in the privation and misery of emigrant steam and rail travel. It was a chastening corrective to Stevenson’s romantic view of the New World. “For many years,” Stevenson explains in The Amateur Emigrant, “American was to [...]

In the South Seas, 1896 Read the Virtual Book | View Images Summary Towards the end of the Equator cruise, RLS started trying to put together the material he had collected about South Seas culture, language, traditions and society: anthropology, history, sociology together with personal impressions. He had already agreed with S. S. McClure (in [...]

Essays of Travel, 1905 Read the Virtual Book Note: Essays of Travel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1905) was assembled after Stevenson’s death and includes some of the author’s travel essays that were not collected in volumes during his lifetime. This volume will be particularly useful for those who wish to read more about travelling in [...]