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'At Home in the World' ‘At Home in the World’ Robert Louis Stevenson’s Global Literary Networks –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Harriet Gordon A Thesis Submitted in Candidature for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University –––––––––––––– 2019 Summary The peripatetic career of Robert Louis Stevenson has long been a subject of interest for scholars, with interest growing even since the conception of this study. Various Stevenson scholars have also noted the author’s exploration of globalization and modernity, as it manifested in the late nineteenth century. This thesis will link these two areas of interest to explore Stevenson’s engagement with the growing mobility of the late nineteenth century. Considering his lesser-known works, many of which have received little critical attention, this study will further distinguish itself from previous work on the subject by adopting a literary geographical approach; in particular I am reading Stevenson’s works through the cultural geographical concept of mobility. Examining his European, American and Pacific travel writing, as well as the little-known novel The Wrecker, I argue that Stevenson is acutely aware of and interested in the growing and changing mobility of the time, exploring in his literary works the developments in transport driving this increased movement of people, and considering the effects on the people and places he encounters. In the final chapter I argue that The Wrecker is the culmination of Stevenson’s varied experiences overseas, where he reflects not on the changes of place, but on how the developments in mobility have altered the nature of time and space in an increasingly connected world system. This concern with mobility is of course linked to his own itinerancy. As arguably the first ‘global’ author, Stevenson wrote and published from America and the Pacific, employing the very networks of transport and communication he writes about to enable his cross-continental publishing practices. Responding to calls to widen the scope of such studies, I extend the literary geographical approach with extensive use of Stevenson’s correspondence and that of his literary network. Alongside textual analysis, I will examine the production geographies and histories of his works, considering not only the influence of Stevenson’s itinerancy on the literary content, but also on the production and eventual reception of his writing. I argue that this complementary, combined approach allows for greater insight into Stevenson life and works, that the ideas and meanings in these texts are intimately bound up with their geographic histories of production. The overarching aim of this thesis, then, is to examine the mobility inherent in Stevenson’s works, considering both the spaces of the texts and the texts, themselves, in space. i Contents List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .............................................................................................................. v Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... vi Introduction .................................................................................................................. 2 Globalisation in the Late Nineteenth Century ................................................. 8 Methodology .................................................................................................. 15 Literary Geography ................................................................................. 15 Mobilities ................................................................................................ 20 Biographical Study .................................................................................. 24 Book Historical Approaches ................................................................... 27 Stevenson’s Literary Geographies ................................................................. 30 Chapter Overview .......................................................................................... 37 Chapter One: Cockfield to the Cévennes ................................................................... 51 The Making of an Author: Travel, Sidney Colvin and Stevenson’s Early Literary Career ........................................................................................ 58 ‘Like continuing another man’s book’: Mobile Identity and Unstable Authorship ............................................................................................... 76 ‘I feel myself in the uttermost parts of the earth’: Dislocation and the Itinerant Author ....................................................................................... 93 Chapter Two: The Clyde to California .................................................................... 105 ‘My tour across ocean and continent’: The Amateur Emigrant and Stevenson’s Transatlantic Network ..................................................... 110 ‘We all belong to many countries’: Place, Identity and the Alternative Geographical Imaginary in Stevenson’s Californian Texts .................. 153 Chapter Three: In the South Seas ............................................................................. 180 Anthropology and the Absent Author .......................................................... 192 ‘A Sea of Islands’: Form and Flux in Stevenson’s Pacific Imaginary ......... 208 ii Chapter Four: The Wrecker ...................................................................................... 223 ‘This is a hell of a collaboration, half the world away’: Itinerant Authorship and Literary Production in The Wrecker ............................ 232 ‘[T]he unrest and movement of our century’: Mobility, Speed and Time–Space Compression in The Wrecker .......................................... 248 Conclusion: Home, at Last ....................................................................................... 277 Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 292 Primary Texts ............................................................................................... 292 Secondary Sources ....................................................................................... 295 iii List of Abbreviations Listed below are abbreviations of works used recurrently throughout this thesis. AE Robert Louis Stevenson, The Amateur Emigrant: With Some First Impressions of America, ed. by Julia Reid (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018) CH Paul Maixner (ed.), Robert Louis Stevenson: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1981) EC Penny Fielding (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) IV Robert Louis Stevenson, An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, Tusitala Edition, vol. 17 (London: Heinemann, 1924), pp. 1–124 ISS Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas, ed. by Neil Rennie (London: Penguin Books, 1998) JSS Journal of Stevenson Studies Letters Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew (eds), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, 8 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994– 95) SS Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘The Silverado Squatters’, in From Scotland to Silverado, ed. by James D. Hart (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), pp. 191–287 TDC Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and An Amateur Emigrant, ed. by Christopher MacLachlan (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), pp. 5–96 Wrecker Robert Louis Stevenson, [and Lloyd Osbourne], The Wrecker, Tusitala Edition, vol. 12 (London: Heinemann, 1924) iv List of Figures Figure 1 Map illustrating Stevenson’s global movements ................................. 1 Figure 2 Map illustrating Stevenson’s movements between Britain and mainland Europe 1873–79 ................................................................. 53 Figure 3 Map illustrating Stevenson’s transatlantic and American journeys ............................................................................................ 108 Figure 4 Historical map of San Francisco (1860) <http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/sf-1860.gif> ........................................ 163 Figure 5 Map illustrating Stevenson’s three cruises through the South Seas <http://ctgpublishing.com/portraits-of-robert-louis-stevenson/south-seas-map-life- of-robert-louis-stevenson/> ..................................................................... 179 Figure 6 Map illustrating the narrative movements of Loudon Dodd and Norris Carthew .......................................................................... 249 v Acknowledgements I have had the support of many people during the writing of this thesis. I am very grateful to the SWW DTP and the AHRC for their academic and financial assistance over the past few years. My thanks also go to the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University. I have loved both my time in Cardiff and at the university and cannot think of a better way to have spent my twenties. My greatest thanks go to Professor Anthony Mandal, who has been with the project since its inception and has helped me through this journey in countless ways. I would not be where I am now without his generous guidance, expertise and encouragement. Dr Neal Alexander came on board at a critical stage of the project and has offered invaluable support and knowledge, particularly in the field of literary
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