Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad - by Linda Dryden & Stephen Arata & Eric Massie (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first book-length study to specifically examine the many intersections in the works of Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad, this volume extends the focus of current debate beyond the writers' South Seas literature. Considering Stevenson and Conrad's shared literary history and experience of Victorian London, it examines their convergence of styles in the emergent modernism of the fin de siècle, their romance and adventure modes, their fictions of duality, and their exploration of the human psyche. Moreover, the book recuperates Stevenson's reputation as a serious writer, not only as Conrad's antecedent and influence but as a writer equally worthy of study in these shared modes.

Book Synopsis

The first book-length study to specifically examine the many intersections in the works of Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad, this volume extends the focus of current debate beyond the writers' South Seas literature. Considering Stevenson and Conrad's shared literary history and experience of Victorian London, it examines their convergence of styles in the emergent modernism of the fin de siècle, their romance and adventure modes, their fictions of duality, and their exploration of the human psyche. Moreover, the book recuperates Stevenson's reputation as a serious writer, not only as Conrad's antecedent and influence but as a writer equally worthy of study in these shared modes.

Review Quotes

"A timely contribution to the critical canon of Stevenson and Conrad." -- Adam Gillon "SUNY New Paltz"

About the Author

Linda Dryden, reader in Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University, is the author of Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance and The Modern Gothic: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells and also co-editor of the Journal of Stevenson Studies.Stephen Arata is Richard A. and Sarah Page May NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle.Eric Massie holds graduate degrees from the University of Aberdeen and the Ph.D. from the University of Stirling. A specialist in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American literature, he has been Carnegie Scholar at the University of Oxford and at Yale University and is the founding editor of the Journal of Stevenson Studies.