Details
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. Autograph letter signed ("Louis," but with "R.L. Stevenson" written in the text of the letter), TO HIS WIFE FANNY (addressed as "My dear fellow"), n.p., n.d. [Saranac Lake, New York, October 1887]. 3 pages, 8vo, separated at vertical center fold with a few letters just touched, first and blank fourth pages a bit darkened, slight fading to parts of third page, reproduction of photograph of Stevenson tipped to fourth page.
"I HAVE FINISHED MY FIRST PAPER FOR SCRIBNER"
Stevenson, in this fine contents letter written over two days (Saturday night and Sunday morning), tells of his work and his daily routine: "...I have finished my first paper for Scribner [Stevenson had agreed to write twelve articles a year for Scribner's magazine for $3500]: A dreamer of dreams, I call it: it is just a gossip with stories, but I do not believe it is altogether bad...By tomorrow I shall hope to have rewritten it...and I shall have earned one twelfth part of 720...What do you think of that, gay madam?..." Stevenson devotes most of a page to describing his daily routine, and continues: "...a chaste life. It is in the morning I go out when I go...There has come a Longman [issue of an English magazine] with a most humorous and tactful article by [Edmund] Gosse: 'Mr. R.L. Stevenson as a poet,' and a few verses by [Andrew] Lang, beginning 'Dear Louis of the awful cheek'..."
"I HAVE FINISHED MY FIRST PAPER FOR SCRIBNER"
Stevenson, in this fine contents letter written over two days (Saturday night and Sunday morning), tells of his work and his daily routine: "...I have finished my first paper for Scribner [Stevenson had agreed to write twelve articles a year for Scribner's magazine for $3500]: A dreamer of dreams, I call it: it is just a gossip with stories, but I do not believe it is altogether bad...By tomorrow I shall hope to have rewritten it...and I shall have earned one twelfth part of 720...What do you think of that, gay madam?..." Stevenson devotes most of a page to describing his daily routine, and continues: "...a chaste life. It is in the morning I go out when I go...There has come a Longman [issue of an English magazine] with a most humorous and tactful article by [Edmund] Gosse: 'Mr. R.L. Stevenson as a poet,' and a few verses by [Andrew] Lang, beginning 'Dear Louis of the awful cheek'..."
Provenance
Autograph Letters, Original Manuscripts...of...Stevenson, Anderson Galleries, 23 November 1914, lot 138.