Island Landfalls - Robert Louis Stevenson

Ill health drove Robert Louis Stevenson from Scotland; the urge for new
and adventurous places drew him to the Pacific. There were those at home
who would have been happier to see him purely as a spinner of the
picturesque, but Stevenson could not close his eyes to the impact of
colonialism, the 'stir-about of epochs and races, barbarisms and
civilizations, virtues and crimes'.

This collection sets three of his imaginative works -The Bottle Imp, The Isle of Voices, and The Beach of Falesa
- within the social and political contexts of Stevenson's letters and
essays from the South Seas. Island ambience, the clash of cultures,
moral ambiguities, all are there, and so too is Stevenson's swift
narrative control, giving a true modernity to his prose.