“In story after story, epicene young men, difficult children, or wild beasts set out to shake up the stifling complacency around them.”
Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) – Saki – was born #OTD, 18 Dec, in Akyab (now Sittwe), in Myanmar. Although born in the Raj & raised in England, his parents were Scots & he considered himself to be Scottish, too. Fatema Ahmed looks at his fierce, funny, & wicked fiction
Saki’s “Tobermory”, “The Boar-Pig”, “The Lumber Room”, & many others are hilarious (as is “Esmé”, if you don’t mind all the blood…). But his horrifying winter tale “The Interlopers” is a work of #Gothic art, worthy of the tradition of James Hogg & #RobertLouisStevenson
My son, then ten years old, was playing, if you please, with Louis […]. And little Austin burst into my room and said, “Louis says come and play.” But oh, I’ll regret it to my dying day, I said, “Oh, later when I’ve finished my letter I’ll come.” And I didn’t go.
—RLS’s stepdaughter Belle Strong, speaking in 1949, recalls the day Stevenson died
“Requiem”, above – Robert Louis Stevenson’s self-composed epitaph – provides the title for Philip Larkin’s most famous #poem, “This Be the Verse”. Daniel Bosch compares the two epitaphic fictions in the Paris Review
Dr Craig Lamont looks at how Robert Louis Stevenson & his literary creations have been – & continue to be – remembered & memorialised, in Scotland & around the world
Gothic Warnings: Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, & the Anthropocene
29 Nov, University of Aberdeen, & online. Free
Dr Emily Alder reconsiders these famous #Gothic works in light of the #Anthropocene, a concept used to describe the impact of human activities on Earth systems & in which the #Victorian period is deeply implicated
More Books About Buildings & Crime
14 Nov, Scottish Parliament, #Edinburgh – free & all welcome
Maps, floor-plans & architectural features matter in #CrimeFiction, & writers have often exploited the symbolic & structural significance of buildings as framing devices.
Author Liam McIlvanney looks at important buildings in the #Scottish crime canon, in works from #RobertLouisStevenson to Abir Mukherjee.
“They were both experienced in such affairs, and powerful with the spade; and they had scarce been twenty minutes at their task before they were rewarded by a dull rattle on the coffin lid.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body-Snatcher”, read by Sir Christopher Lee
Ruth Richardson writes in The Lancet on how Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Body-Snatcher” shows the author’s
“acute analysis of degrees of guilt; the complicit socialisation of maleness; the hypocrisies which so often lie behind worldly success; the damage behind apparent failure; the dark silences that can exist in social relations that pass as bonhomie”
“What I know is this: if there is sich a thing as a Author, I’m his favourite chara’ter. He does me fathoms better’n he does you—fathoms, he does.”
—Long John Silver & Captain Smollett slip out between chapters of #TreasureIsland for a chat & a fly smoke in “The Persons of the Tale” – the first of #RobertLouisStevenson’s twenty FABLES, available as a free ebook from our website
Can't stop the #BookWeek at https://www.twitch.tv/chilliteracy
Tonight Sam's back with some Year One favourites! We've got Dickens, Stevenson, Middleton, Nesbitt, and maybe more if there's time? Come and find a new story to love! @bookstodon