Travels with a donkey in the Cevennes - Robert Louis Stevenson

This volume of Stevenson's travel writings includes his first published book An Inland Voyage (1878) - a vivid account of a canoe voyage in Belgium and France in two sail-powered skiffs, named Cigarette and Arethusa - and Stevenson's popular description of a tour with his recalcitrant donkey Modestine, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879). Stevenson's natural affinity for France, his appreciation of its landscape, and his enthusiasm for the French way of life are borne out by these works, which prompted a contemporary critic to suggest that he was `a Frenchman born out of place', rather than `a Scotsman of the Scots'. In addition to these longer pieces, a selection of travel essays deriving from the writer's experiences on the C te d'Azur, at Fontainbleau, and in the Swiss Alps reveal Stevenson's iconoclasm, his unconventionality, and the Bohemian stance which brought about his confrontation with the Edinburgh literary establishment.