Last review of the year. I hope you have a fine end to this year, wherever you are reading from.
My first fascination with literary friendships began with the knowledge of one between Tagore and Yeats, two stalwarts of their time. Since then, I have tried to read correspondences between authors where I can. And this book was on my wishlist too. The nice thing about sharing wishlists for Christmas is that one doesn’t know which book one is going to get. And so on Christmas morning, I was delighted with this waiting for me from my friend Cl.
Stevenson and Barrie – both young Scotsmen, alumni of the University of Edinburgh, and writers of novels for children. They struck up an unusual friendship in that they never met in person. Stevenson had moved to Samoa for health reasons, and Barrie never managed to leave his elderly mother to go visit him. And of course, Stevenson died at 44, so there wasn’t enough time.
But this meant that their friendship developed through these letters – 16 of which have been included in this volume by Michael Shaw. In it, they talk about their works, characters, and the lives they were leading. Barrie was enamoured by Stevenson – not only did he borrow names and mannerisms from the latter’s characters; but he also devised ingenious ways in which their characters might be family to one another. He was also effusive in his praise (and his love) for Stevenson’s literary genius.
Their real-life families feature too. Stevenson’s entire household is part of some letters and Barrie sometimes writes a line or two to each, individually. Barrie, in turn, writed about his mother and also his famous cricket team ‘Allahakbarries.’ This, of course, was the team that included literary greats like Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, A. A. Milne amongst others.
Reading all of this provides the background to the thinking behind some of my all-time favourite characters in literature. And this is a well-written and beautifully presented work.
BookMark 