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In the autumn of 1878, the young Robert Louis Stevenson spent twelve days walking about 120 miles through the Cévennes mountains of southern France, with a…
In the autumn of 1878, the young Robert Louis Stevenson spent twelve days walking about 120 miles through the Cévennes mountains of southern France, with a small, stubborn donkey named Modestine to carry his gear, including a huge sleeping sack of his own design. He records his struggles to make her move, nights sleeping under the stars, a stay at a Trappist monastery and the history of the Camisards, the Protestant rebels who rose against Louis XIV in these hills.
Context and significance
Published in 1879, this is one of the earliest classics of travel on foot for pleasure, and its route is now a marked long-distance path, the GR 70 or Chemin de Stevenson. Stevenson was then in love with Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman he would later marry, and some passages read like a disguised longing for her. See his life.
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) came from a family of Edinburgh lighthouse engineers and was expected to follow them, but chose writing, despite lungs so weak he was often bedridden. He travelled constantly in search of health, married the American Fanny Osbourne and wrote Treasure Island for her son.
Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses followed, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. He died there at forty-four and is buried on a hilltop above his home.