Storyteller

From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction “Damrosch brings to Stevenson’s life the calm, humane interpretive powers that he deployed with such success in . . . The Club. . . . [An] excellent book.”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal   “This magnificent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson reveals much about a writer that we think we knew. . . . Dazzling.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)   Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with “smoldering rich fire.” Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. “I loved a ship,”