'' STORYTELLER '' : BOOK REVIEW

Storyteller : The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. By Leo Damrosch. " He wrote feverishly and died too soon.''

'' Storyteller, '' Leo Damrosch's thoughtful, informative biography of Robert Louis Stevenson,  introduces the 19th century Scottish writer of '' Treasure Island '' and '' Kidnapped '' with tributes to his sterling personality and to the pleasures of his fiction.

Stevenson's mentor, the critic Sidney Colvin, described him as '' infinitely kind and tender, devotedly generous, brave and loving.'' Mark Twain admired the ' smoldering rich fire ' of his eyes. 

 

Calvino called himself a '' Stevenson worshipper,'' and Borges wrote, '' Ever since childhood Stevenson has been for me one of the forms of happiness.''

It's reassuring to sense that we are not about to watch another biographer eviscerate a subject or pounce on the scandal that might sell the book.

Yet all this praise, so early on, raises a question that Damrosch - the author of acclaimed lives of Rousseau, Casanova and Swift, among others, will have to address :

Why is this prolific, gifted writer best known today for one brief, atypical work: 

'' The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ''?  

Many who use those two names as shorthand for the divided self have only little or no idea who created  that tormented creature.

'' Treasure Island '' and '' Kidnapped '' have been made and remade into films, but unlike his fellow  Victorians - Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, the Brontes - Stevenson is rarely read or taught.

Damrosch makes a convincing case for him as a skilled stylist and innovative narrator. He wants us to read Stevenson's novels. He has a talent for quoting his subject.

There are beautiful passages from Stevenson about his marriage to Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne and about marriage in general.

Stevenson's life was as adventurous as the pirate exploits in his fiction, though obviously less criminal and aggressive.

He was seriously ill for most of his 44 years, yet he traveled semi-constantly, beginning with trips to the Scottish countryside and ending with his final journey from the Adirondacks to Samoa.

The World Students Society thanks Francine Prose.