Name: The Hair Trunk or the Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza
Price: 646.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Author: Stevenson, Robert Louis ; Swearingen, Roger G.
ISBN: 9781846220500

portada The Hair Trunk or the Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza

The Hair Trunk or the Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza

Type

Physical Book

Author

Robert Louis Stevenson

Illustrated by

Roger G. Swearingen

Publisher

Zeticula

Language

English

Pages

202

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm

Weight

0.47 kg.

ISBN13

9781846220500

Synopsis "The Hair Trunk or the Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza"

Half a dozen young men find themselves at the end of their university years facing the awful prospect that they must now support themselves. They decide to found an Ideal Commonwealth, in the Navigator Islands - Samoa (where, by a wonderful coincidence, a decade later, Stevenson himself eventually settled and where he died and is buried). Here - they reason - work and money, dreary offices and dreary jobs, will not be known or needed. But capital is required to start even an Ideal Commonwealth. One of their number knows of "a real, glowing, gaudy, old-high treasure" - gold and jewels in a trunk in a family castle in the Scottish Highlands, theirs for the stealing, and . . . Robert Louis Stevenson began writing the comic novel The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza in April or May 1877, when he was twenty-six, and left it unfinished - after 30,000 words, in nine chapters - two years later. It shows a side of him whom most readers have never known existed: a satirical Stevenson making great fun, in a manner worthy of his contemporaries Gilbert and Sullivan, of the events and passions, the personalities and the predicaments, of his day. Previously published only in a French translation, it now takes its rightful place among his memorable early works of fiction. Transcribed, introduced, and annotated by the noted scholar Roger G. Swearingen from Stevenson's unpublished manuscript (now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California), this edition reveals glimpses of the author's developing literary skills and his complex and often madcap personal temperament. The extensive and illustrated annotations are fascinating in themselves, not least for the references to the contemporary late-Victorian scene.

Robert Louis Stevenson

(Author)

View Author's Page

(Edinburgh, 1850 - Samoa, 1894) British novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist. He entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of sixteen to follow in his father's footsteps and become a lighthouse engineer, a career he would later abandon. His nautical studies allowed him to come into contact with seafaring people and customs, key ingredients in some of his most famous works. His renowned work, Treasure Island, was published under the pseudonym Captain George North in 1881. In 1886, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one of the great classics of literature, was released. He died on the island of Samoa, at his home, Vailima.

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