St. Ives

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Overview

St. Ives is a historical adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. St. Ives tells the story of a French hussar officer Jacques St. Ives imprisoned by the British in Scotland. The story is an exploration of the recurring theme of the polarity of human nature. St. Ives (whose family motto is "Audentes Fortuna Juvat"--"Fortune favors the daring"), a witty, womanizing veteran of Napoleon's wars, kills a brother officer in a duel. In order to avoid having to fight all the officers of the dead man's regiment, as well as to have time to bed his latest flame, St. Ives insults his commandant to be given a demotion. Instead, St. Ives is broken to the ranks and, now a private in an infantry regiment, he proceeds to get himself captured by the British. Sent to a prison camp in Scotland, St. Ives soon becomes involved in the love life of the prison's commander, Major Farquar Chevening and with Flora Gilchrist and her unmarried aunt. He is also reunited with his émigré grandfather, a ci-devant count, and his wastrel brother, who have been living in Scotland since the deaths of St. Ives's father and mother during the Revolution. Intrigue, masked balls, disguises, duels, and hair's-breath escapes ensue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783736802445
Publisher:	BookRix
Publication date:	06/23/2017
Sold by:	Readbox
Format:	eBook
Pages:	414
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, the son of an engineer. He briefly studied engineering, then law, and contributed to university magazines while a student. Despite life-long poor health, he was an enthusiastic traveller, writing about European travels in the late 1870s and marrying in America in 1879. He contributed to various periodicals, writing first essays and later fiction. His first novel was Treasure Island in 1883, intended for his stepson, who collaborated with Stevenson on two later novels. Some of Stevenson's subsequent novels are insubstantial popular romances, but others possess a deepening psychological intensity. He also wrote a handful of plays in collaboration with W.E. Henley. In 1888, he left England for his health, and never returned, eventually settling in Samoa after travelling in the Pacific islands. His time here was one of relatively good health and considerable writing, as well as of deepening concern for the Polynesian islanders under European exploitation, expressed in fictional and factual writing from his final years, some of which was so contrary to contemporary culture that a full text remained unavailable until well after Stevenson's death. R. L. Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage in 1894.

Date of Birth:

November 13, 1850

Date of Death:

December 3, 1894

Place of Birth:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Place of Death:

Vailima, Samoa

Education:

Edinburgh University, 1875