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Island Nights' Entertainments

出版	Independently Published, 2018-04-08
主題	Fiction / Action & Adventure
ISBN	19807769039781980776901
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=zrkftwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Island Nights' Entertainments (also known as South Sea Tales) is a collection of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1893. It would prove to contain some of his final completed work before his death in 1894.It contains three stories: The Beach of Falesá - The Bottle Imp - The Isle of Voices.The dedication was written in January 1892 in a letter to Charles Baxter, Robert Louis Stevenson's friend and adviser, and the book finally published in 1893. The dedication reads: To three old shipmates among the islands, Harry Henderson, Ben Hird, Jack Buckland, their friend.All three were Robert Louis Stevenson's fellow cabin passengers on the 1890 Janet Nicholl voyage.Harry Henderson was a partner in the firm Henderson and Macfarlane (died 1926, Melbourne); Ben Hird, the supercargo and trader; Jack Buckland a copra trader and original of the Tommy Hadden character in The Wrecker. Jack Buckland's dedication copy of Island Nights' Entertainments was inscribed by Stevenson to "Jack Buckland, from Robert Louis Stevenson". A character called 'young Buncombe' makes a brief appearance in chapter 2 of "The Beach of Falesá".I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond. The land breeze blew in our faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set me sneezing. I should say I had been for years on a low island near the line, living for the most part solitary among natives. Here was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be quite strange to me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the rare smell of them, renewed my blood.The captain blew out the binnacle lamp."There!" said he, "there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind the break of the reef. That's Falesá, where your station is, the last village to the east; nobody lives to windward I don't know why. AuthorRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, musician and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson was a literary celebrity during his lifetime, and now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins". Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England in late 1873 when he met two people who became very important to him--Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with a son, who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who eventually married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a heated correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as "Madonna"). Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was the first editor of Stevenson's letters after his death. Soon after their first meeting, he had placed Stevenson's first paid contribution in The Portfolio--an essay titled "Roads". Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen in turn introduced him to a more important friend while visiting Edinburgh in 1875.