The Teller of Tales

by Hunter Davies

Published 14 November 1994
Robert Louis Stevenson was an influential travel writer, who said "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive". He is best-known for his literary travels in the past, in such books as "Kidnapped" and "Treasure Island"; but he also travelled in real life, on a donkey in the Cevennes and across the Pacific to Samoa, where he died on 3 December 1894. Hunter Davies retraces Stevenson's steps in this book, which is part travelogue, part biography, and visits Stevenson's haunts from Edinburgh to France, and from California to his resting-place in the Pacific, seeking out the man and his motivation.