The Silverado Squatters: is Robert Louis Stevenson's travel memoir of his two-month honeymoon trip with Fanny Vandegrift to Napa Valley, California, in 1880. In July 1879, Stevenson received word that his future American wife's divorce was almost complete, but that she was seriously ill.

The Silverado Squatters: is Robert Louis Stevenson's travel memoir of his two-month honeymoon trip with Fanny Vandegrift to Napa Valley, California, in 1880. In July 1879, Stevenson received word that his future American wife's divorce was almost complete, but that she was seriously ill.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) traveled to California in 1879 in pursuit of Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, the Oakland woman with whom he had fallen in love in France. The two were married in the spring of 1880 and honeymooned in a cabin at Silverado, a mining ghost town on Mt. St. Helena. In the next fourteen years, Mrs. Stevenson nursed her husband while he produced the verses, stories, and books of travel and adventure that made him famous. Silverado (1888) tells the story of the newlywed Stevensons' trip to Silverado. Stevenson writes of their journey from San Francisco up the Napa Valley to Calistoga and then up the mountain to their goal. He describes their neighbors, and recounts tales of the town in its glory days as a silver mining camp.

The Silverado Squatters is a travel memoir by Robert Louis Stevenson of his two-month honeymoon trip with Fanny Vandegrift to Napa Valley, California, in 1880.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) traveled to California in 1879 in pursuit of Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, the Oakland woman with whom he had fallen in love in France. The two were married in the spring of 1880 and honeymooned in a cabin at Silverado, a mining ghost town on Mt. St. Helena. In the next fourteen years, Mrs. Stevenson nursed her husband while he produced the verses, stories, and books of travel and adventure that made him famous. Silverado (1888) tells the story of the newlywed Stevensons' trip to Silverado. Stevenson writes of their journey from San Francisco up the Napa Valley to Calistoga and then up the mountain to their goal. He describes their neighbors, and recounts tales of the town in its glory days as a silver mining camp.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is viewed as the classic allegory of man's duality--the good and evil embodied in every person. But could Jekyll's "transforming draught" have been alcohol? In the Victorian era, alcohol was the topic of national debate for decades and people endlessly deliberated its proper place in society. Shadowed all his life by the cloud of alcoholism, Stevenson well knew the good and evil of strong drink. This book investigates Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as an allegory of alcoholism--an interpretation that cultural change and the story's renown have perhaps obscured. The author examines patterns of language, plot, characterization and imagery to reveal how mind-altering drink figures as the story's subtext. Early chapters establish the story's literal references to strong drink and its metaphors regarding alcohol. The focus then shifts to drinking in Stevenson's life, the sociology of drink in Victorian Britain, and the portrayal of alcohol in literature, including Stevenson's other works. Possible real-life models for the Jekyll-Hyde character are explored. Subsequent chapters examine the history of Britain's temperance movement, scenes that arose from Stevenson's dreams, how the temperance movement and industrial development may have influenced the story, and the story's interpretation in Stevenson's time. An appendix further investigates the elements of Stevenson's language.