Thursday, January 8, 2009
For the Love of a Woman, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Okay, so Ed posted a note about a conversation we were having, that ranged around on a few different topics. All of the topics were interesting, but at the time, the most interesting to me was my discovery of a lost work of Robert Louis Stevenson. In all my searches of all the historic databases in The Library, and The Google, I couldn't find any other references to his story titled "For the Love of a Woman."
Worst of all, I got to the end of chapter five, and I couldn't find any more chapters. A more thorough search of The Evening World, which published the first five chapters, seems to indicate this is not entirely atypical (e.g. publishing the first five or so sections, promising a "to be continued," then failing to continue). Here are the chapters I found:
Robert Louis Stevenson knows how to tell a good story, so as you can imagine, I was hooked. Wondering what became of the story, I searched high and low for the title, finding nothing. I searched for the name of the main character. Still nothing.
Eventually, I found it.
I am, alas, not destined for fame for accidentally discovering the lost work of a great genius. Hell, I was just looking for knitting patterns for my wife, anyway. Note the knitting pattern on the same page as chapter five: "The Fashionable Fad for Knitting and Crochet Work."
Yeah, but back to the story. Basically, from what I can tell, this was eventually published, in a polished form, as "The Pavilion on the Links" in The New Arabian Nights. There are, however, at least two mysteries that remain. Why was a draft of that story published more than twenty years after it first appeared? Why were there only five chapters?
There is a Wikipedia page about the story (isn't there always?), which tells me that I might find the original in some Cornhill Magazine, and I bet I know where I can find that. It's been called, apparently, the "first English short story."
In the meantime, if any of you are as impatient as me, there is a gorgeous digitized version published in 1913 available here: http://www.archive.org/stream/paviliononlinksi00stevuoft. Read it there, or get it from your own library. Or buy it on Amazon, for that matter.
I know this has been a departure from my usual posts, hopefully everyone stayed with me. And just in case anyone was wondering if the series on Project Managers is really done, it's not. I just wanted to post about this in-between, along with a couple other things. I'll get back to that eventually, really I will.
Unless I don't.
[edit: since this is kind of a book review, I feel compelled to offer a rating: I give it a solid twenty-three]
Worst of all, I got to the end of chapter five, and I couldn't find any more chapters. A more thorough search of The Evening World, which published the first five chapters, seems to indicate this is not entirely atypical (e.g. publishing the first five or so sections, promising a "to be continued," then failing to continue). Here are the chapters I found:
Robert Louis Stevenson knows how to tell a good story, so as you can imagine, I was hooked. Wondering what became of the story, I searched high and low for the title, finding nothing. I searched for the name of the main character. Still nothing.
Eventually, I found it.
I am, alas, not destined for fame for accidentally discovering the lost work of a great genius. Hell, I was just looking for knitting patterns for my wife, anyway. Note the knitting pattern on the same page as chapter five: "The Fashionable Fad for Knitting and Crochet Work."
Yeah, but back to the story. Basically, from what I can tell, this was eventually published, in a polished form, as "The Pavilion on the Links" in The New Arabian Nights. There are, however, at least two mysteries that remain. Why was a draft of that story published more than twenty years after it first appeared? Why were there only five chapters?
There is a Wikipedia page about the story (isn't there always?), which tells me that I might find the original in some Cornhill Magazine, and I bet I know where I can find that. It's been called, apparently, the "first English short story."
In the meantime, if any of you are as impatient as me, there is a gorgeous digitized version published in 1913 available here: http://www.archive.org/stream/paviliononlinksi00stevuoft. Read it there, or get it from your own library. Or buy it on Amazon, for that matter.
I know this has been a departure from my usual posts, hopefully everyone stayed with me. And just in case anyone was wondering if the series on Project Managers is really done, it's not. I just wanted to post about this in-between, along with a couple other things. I'll get back to that eventually, really I will.
Unless I don't.
[edit: since this is kind of a book review, I feel compelled to offer a rating: I give it a solid twenty-three]
// posted by David @ 10:08 PM 
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