Millions of readers throughout the world continue to enjoy Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses, and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). A celebrated author in many different fields of literature, Stevenson is also recognized as a highly engaging and prolific correspondent: he penned over 2,800 letters, which are contained in eight critically acclaimed volumes published by Yale University Press. In this book, 317 of Stevenson's most interesting and revealing letters represent each stage of his mature life. With a linking narrative and full annotation, Ernest Mehew sets the letters in the context of Stevenson's remarkable life. Beginning with the days of his troubled youth in Edinburgh, Stevenson's letters go on to tell of his love for Frances Sitwell, a beautiful, older married woman; a reckless journey to California in pursuit of Fanny Osbourne, the woman who became his wife; their worldwide but vain search for a healthy place to live; and a period of adventure in the South Seas, where Stevenson wrote some of his best work and became passionately involved in Samoan life. The letters show the author's zest for living despite daunting illnesses, his struggles with his own writing, his literary tastes, and his affection for his friends. Stevenson writes in many moods, ranging from playful and witty to deeply serious. Better than any biography ever could, these letters in Stevenson's own words tell the real story of his life.

One of the most important women of the 20th Century, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was also one of its most prolific letter writers. Yet never before has a selection of her letters to public figures, world leaders, and individuals outside her family been made available to general readers and to historians unable to visit the archives at Hyde Park. It Seems to Me demonstrates Roosevelt's significance as a stateswoman and professional politician, particularly after her husband's death in 1945. These letters reveal a dimension of her personality often lost in collections of letters to family members and friends, that of a shrewd, self-confident woman unafraid to speak her mind. In her letters, Roosevelt lectured Truman, badgered Eisenhower, and critiqued Kennedy. She disagreed with the Catholic Church over aid to parochial schools, made recommendations for political appointments, expressed her opinion on the conviction of Alger Hiss. Some letters demonstrate her commitment to civil rights, many her understanding of Cold War politics, and still others her support of labor unions. As a whole, this collection provides unique insights into both Eleanor Roosevelt's public life, as well as American culture and politics during the decades following World War II.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH From the New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank comes a much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.” Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writing—and who would eventually pen such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales. Praise for Under the Wide and Starry Sky “A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . Under the Wide and Starry Sky is a dual portrait, with Louis and Fanny sharing the limelight in the best spirit of teamwork—a romantic partnership.”—USA Today “Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when it’s meant to be.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Horan’s prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself weren’t so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”—The Dallas Morning News “A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”—The New York Times Book Review

Isobel Field, the stepdaughter of Robert Louis Stevenson, was a wonderful storyteller, and a writer of great wit and acuity. She was with her mother, Fanny, when they met Stevenson in Grez, France, in 1876; when Fanny and Louis married in 1880 in San Francisco and at the Silverado sojourn; with the Stevensons in Hawaii in the late 1880s; and finally with them in Samoa from 1890 until Stevenson's death in 1894.