Travel Essays

Best known for his fiction and poetry, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was also a prolific travel writer. This ebook is a collection of his travel works.

In his earliest book, “An Inland Voyage,” Stevenson and a friend paddle their canoes from Antwerp to the north of France. Along the way, they meet with fellow travelers, innkeepers, sportsmen, and the police. “Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes” is his illustrated guidebook to the Scottish capital, covering both the history and the nineteenth-century present of the city and its people. In “Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes” Stevenson makes a walking trip in mountainous central France, accompanied, aided, and occasionally obstructed by the donkey Modestine. Both “An Inland Voyage” and “Travels with a Donkey” are considered two of the first popular books in outdoor literature, written at a time when hiking and camping were still uncommon recreational activities.

In 1878 Stevenson traveled to California, were he married and lived for a few years. He documented his journey in several books and essays. “The Amateur Emigrant” describes the passage from Scotland to New York and “Across the Plains” describes the journey by train from New York to California. In “The Old and New Pacific Capitals” he describes the cities of Monterey and San Francisco. Finally, “The Silverado Squatters” is a memoir of Stevenson’s honeymoon to the Napa Valley with his wife Fanny.

The remaining travel essays cover shorter trips in Europe and Stevenson’s general reflections on the nature of travel.

This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.