travels with a donkey in the cévennes robert louis stevenson

The great affair is to move to feel the needs and hitches of our life more clearly to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Stevenson provides the reader with the philosophy behind his undertaking: įor my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. Some locals are horrified that he would sleep outdoors and suggest it is dangerous to do so because of wolves or robbers. Stevenson is several times mistaken for a peddler, the usual occupation of someone traveling in his fashion. It also tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags, large and heavy enough to require a donkey to carry. It is one of the earliest accounts to present hiking and camping outdoors as a recreational activity. The other principal character is Modestine, a stubborn, manipulative donkey he could never quite master. The terrain, with its barren rocky heather-filled hillsides, he often compared to parts of Scotland. Travels recounts Stevenson's 12-day, 200-kilometre (120 mi) solo hiking journey through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France in 1878. His journey was designed to provide material for publication while allowing him to distance himself from a love affair with an American woman of which his friends and families did not approve and who had returned to her husband in California. Stevenson was in his late 20s and still dependent on his parents for support. Why not post a question or comment yourself? Just click the link below.Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879) is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's earliest published works and is considered a pioneering classic of outdoor literature. No active discussions on Stevenson found. Recent Forum Posts on Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affectionately yours,įan of this book? Help us introduce it to others by writing a better introduction for it. Of what shallĪ man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, my dear Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an oldĪnd kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. The public is but a generous patron who defrays

Messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude, dropped for They alone take his meaning they find private We are alone, we are only nearer to the absent.Įvery book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of They keep us worthy of ourselves and when Wilderness of this world-all, too, travellers with a donkey: and theīest that we find in our travels is an honest friend.

But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of luck to The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable andįortunate for me.

Travels with a donkey in the cévennes robert louis stevenson