Author Description

Robert Louis Stevenson was an influential travel writer, who said to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. He is best-known for his literary travels in the past, in such books as Kidnapped and Treasure Island; but he also travelled in real life, on a donkey in the Cevennes and across the Pacific to Samoa, where he died on 3 December 1894. Hunter Davies retraces Stevenson's steps in this book, which is part travelogue, part biography, and visits Stevenson's haunts from Edinburgh to France, and from California to his resting-place in the Pacific, seeking out the man and his motivation.