Research in English IV

Submitted by:
Jose Emmanuel S. Maningas


Submitted to:
Ms. Regine O. Tresvalles

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,

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

1. Dante Alighieri
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Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet, and one of the supreme figures
of world literature, who was admired for the depth of his spiritual vision and
for the range of his intellectual accomplishment.



THE DIVINE COMEDY

Dantes epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, was probably begun about
1307; it was completed shortly before his death. The work is an allegorical
narrative, in verse of great precision and dramatic force, of the poets imaginary
journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven. It is divided into three sections,
correspondingly named the Inferno (Hell), the Purgatorio (Purgatory), and the
Paradiso (Paradise). In each of these three realms the poet meets with
mythological, historical, and contemporary personages. Each character is
symbolic of a particular fault or virtue, either religious or political; and the
punishment or rewards meted out to the characters further illustrate the larger
meaning of their actions in the universal scheme. Dante is guided through hell
and purgatory by Virgil, who is, to Dante, the symbol of reason. The woman
Dante loved, Beatrice, whom he regards as both a manifestation and an
instrument of the divine will, is his guide through paradise.
Each section contains 33 cantos, except for the first section, which has,
in addition, a canto serving as a general introduction. The poem is written in
terza rima (third rhyme), a three-line stanza rhyming aba, bcb, cdc, etc. (see
Versification). Dante intended the poem for his contemporaries and thus wrote
it in Italian rather than Latin. He named the poem La commedia (The Comedy)
because it ends happily, in heaven, his journey climaxed by a vision of God and
by a complete blending of his own will with that of the deity. The adjective
divina (divine) was first added to the title in a 1555 edition.
The work, which provides a summary of the political, scientific, and
philosophical thought of the time, may be interpreted on four levels: the literal,
allegorical, moral, and mystical. Indeed, part of the majesty of this work rests
on its multiplicity of meaning even more than on its masterfully poetic and
dramatic qualities. It is supreme as a dramatization of medieval Christian
theology, but even beyond that framework, Dantes imaginary voyage can be
understood as an allegory of the purification of ones soul and of the
achievement of inner peace through the guidance of reason and love.

2. Geoffrey Chaucer
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William Caxton (1422? 1491)
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?-1400), one of the greatest English poets, whose
masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, was one of the most important influences
on the development of English literature. His life is known primarily through
records pertaining to his career as a courtier and civil servant under the
English kings Edward III and Richard II.

The son of a prosperous London wine merchant, Chaucer may have
attended the Latin grammar school of Saint Paul's Cathedral and may have
studied law at the Inns of Court. In 1357 he was page to the countess of Ulster,
Elizabeth, the wife of Prince Lionel, third son of Edward III; there, he would
have learned the ways of the court and the use of arms. By 1367 Chaucer was
an esquire to Edward. About 1366 he married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting
to the queen and afterward in the service of John of Gaunt, who was duke of
Lancaster and Edward's fourth son. Chaucer served as controller of customs
for London from 1374 to 1386 and clerk of the king's works from 1389 to 1391,
in which post he was responsible for maintenance of royal buildings and parks.
About 1386 Chaucer moved from London to a country residence (probably
Greenwich), where in 1386 he was justice of the peace and representative to
Parliament. He traveled on several diplomatic missions to France, one to Spain
in 1366, and two to Italy from 1372 to 1373 and in 1378. In the last year of his
life, Chaucer leased a house within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. After
his death, he was buried in the Abbey (an honor for a commoner), in what has
since become the Poets' Corner.
3. Thomas Kempis
Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no
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Thomas Kempis (1380?-1471), German monk and writer, who is
generally accepted as the author of The Imitation of Christ, a devotional treatise
that became immensely influential. His original name was Thomas Hemerken.
He was born in Kempen, Prussia, and educated at Deventer in the Netherlands.
In 1407 he entered the Augustinian monastery of Mount Saint Agnes, near
Zwolle, in the Netherlands, and was ordained a priest in 1413. The greater part
of his long life was passed in the seclusion of the cloister, where he copied
manuscripts, counseled, and wrote. Thomas's writings are representative of the
devotio moderna, a movement of spiritual reform centered in the Netherlands
that stressed the moral example of Christ. Thomas also wrote sermons,
religious biographies, and devotional books for the young.
4. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), British physician, novelist, and
detective-story writer, best known as the creator of the character of master
sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland,
and educated at Stonyhurst College and the University of Edinburgh. From
1882 to 1890 he practiced medicine in Southsea, England. A Study in Scarlet,
the first of about 60 stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, appeared in 1887. The
characterization of Holmes, particularly his ability of ingenious deductive
reasoning, was based on one of Conan Doyle's own university professors.
Equally brilliant creations are the characters who play Holmes's foils: his friend
Dr. Watson, the good-natured narrator of the stories, and the master criminal
Professor Moriarty. Conan Doyle was so successful in his literary career that
approximately five years after his first works were published he abandoned his
medical practice to devote his entire time to writing.
Conan Doyle served in the Boer War (1899-1902) as a physician, and on
his return to England wrote the nonfiction books The Great Boer War (1900)
and The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct (1902), attempting to
justify England's participation in the fighting. For these works he was knighted
in 1902. During World War I he wrote History of the British Campaign in France
and Flanders (6 volumes, 1916-1920) as a tribute to British bravery.

An advocate of spiritualism beginning in the late 1880s, his lectures and
writings on the subject increased markedly after the death of his eldest son in
the war. Conan Doyles autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was
published in 1924. He died in Crowborough, Sussex, England, on July 7, 1930.
5. Alexandre Dumas
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Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), French novelist and playwright of the
romantic period, known as Dumas pre. Dumas, the most widely read of all
French writers, is best remembered for his historical novels The Three
Musketeers (1844; trans. 1846) and The Count of Monte-Cristo (1844; trans.
1846).
Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterts, Aisne, July 24, 1802. He was the
son of a general and the grandson of a nobleman who had settled in Santo
Domingo (Dominican Republic) and married a black woman there. He had little
formal education but read voraciously and was especially attracted to 16th-
and 17th-century adventure stories. While working as a clerk, he attended
performances of an English Shakespearean company and was inspired to write
drama. The Comdie Franaise produced his play Henri III et sa cour (Henry III
and His Court) in 1829 and the romantic drama Christine in 1830; both were
resounding successes.

Dumas was a prolific writer; about 1200 volumes were published under
his name. Although many were the result of collaboration or the production of
a fiction factory in which hired writers executed his ideas, almost all the
writing bears the unmistakable imprint of his personal genius and
inventiveness.
Dumas's earnings were enormous but scarcely sufficient in his later
years to sustain his extravagant style of living. He spent great sums of money
in maintaining his estate outside Paris (Monte-Cristo), supporting numerous
mistresses (one of whom was the mother of his son Alexandre), purchasing
artworks, and making up the losses incurred by numerous business ventures.
At his death, on December 5, 1870, he was virtually bankrupt.
Besides his historical novels, the works of Dumas include the plays
Antony (1831), La tour de Nesle (The Tower of Nesle, 1832), Catherine Howard
(1834), and L'Alchimiste (The Alchemist, 1839), as well as numerous
dramatizations of his own fiction. He also wrote memoirs, which give a vivid
picture of his times.
6. Mark Twain
Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910),
American writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad,
often irreverent humor or biting social satire. Twains writing is also known for
realism of place and language, memorable characters, and condemnation of
hypocrisy and oppression.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER



A visit from a boyhood friend reminded Twain of youthful escapades in
Hannibal. After two or three false starts, Twain found the right approach and
worked on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at intervals throughout 1874 and
1875. Published in 1876 it established Twain as a master of character and
situation as well as humor. This celebration of boyhood in a town on the
Mississippi River draws heavily on Twains memories. In his words, Tom was
all the boy I ever knew. Rejecting the standard pattern of juvenile literature in
which good children are rewarded and bad children are punished, he wrote a
novel about real youngsters, vividly and humorously describing their
impressions and their adventures.




THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Almost as soon as Tom Sawyer was completed Twain planned a
companion story, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Begun in 1876 it was
repeatedly put aside but finally published in 1884. With Huckleberry Finn,
generally considered his masterpiece, Twain reach the highest level of his
creativity. Especially outstanding is Twains portrayal of the freethinking,
pioneer spirit of Huck, who fights pretense and hypocrisy with good-humored
common sense. Hucks adventures also provide the reader with a panorama of
American life along the Mississippi before the Civil War. Twains skill in
capturing the rhythms of that life helps make the book one of the classics of
American literature.



7. Herman Melville
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Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

Herman Melville (1819-1891), American writer whose novel Moby Dick is
one of the towering literary achievements in the history of fiction. Based on a
detailed knowledge of the sea, ships, and whaling, Moby Dick reveals Melville's
profound insight into human nature and his preoccupation with human fate in
the universe. It also contains one of the most fascinating characters in fiction,
the obsessed, tormented Captain Ahab. Melville is also known for the short
novel Billy Budd, in which he explores the tragic conflict between good and evil
and the limitations of human justice.


With Moby Dick Melville reached his highest achievement as a writer.
During Melvilles lifetime, however, only a handful of readers recognized its
greatness. Ostensibly an adventure story of the whaling industry, the novel has
an action-filled plot, chapters on whales and the business of whaling, powerful
descriptions of the wild sea and its inhabitants, character sketches of the
seamen aboard a whaling vessel, and a considerable amount of philosophical
musing.

8. Saint Thomas Aquinas
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Saint Thomas Aquinas, sometimes called the Angelic Doctor and the
Prince of Scholastics (1225-1274), Italian philosopher and theologian, whose
works have made him the most important figure in Scholastic philosophy and
one of the leading Roman Catholic theologians.

Aquinas was born of a noble family in Roccasecca, near Aquino, and was
educated at the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino and at the University
of Naples. He joined the Dominican order while still an undergraduate in 1243,
the year of his father's death. His mother, opposed to Thomas's affiliation with
a mendicant order, confined him to the family castle for more than a year in a
vain attempt to make him abandon his chosen course. She released him in
1245, and Aquinas then journeyed to Paris to continue his studies. He studied
under the German Scholastic philosopher Albertus Magnus, following him to
Cologne in 1248. Because Aquinas was heavyset and taciturn, his fellow
novices called him Dumb Ox, but Albertus Magnus is said to have predicted
that this ox will one day fill the world with his bellowing.
9. Lew Wallace
, strike at his self-

Lew Wallace (1827-1905), American military leader and writer. His full
name is Lewis Wallace. Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana. His law
studies were interrupted by the Mexican War (1846-1848), in which he served
as an officer with a volunteer regiment from 1846 to 1847. During the
American Civil War (1861-1865), Wallace served in the Union army and
reached the rank of major general. At the close of the war, he presided over
several military courts of inquiry and was a member of the court that tried
those accused of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Wallace
served as governor of the territory of New Mexico from 1878 to 1881 and as
minister to Turkey from 1881 to 1885. His novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
(1880) won him a worldwide reputation. A play (1899) and two motion pictures
(1926 and 1959) have been based on the book. Wallace's other novels include
The Fair God (1873) and The Prince of India (1893).

10. Nathaniel Hawthorne


Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), American novelist, whose works are
deeply concerned with the ethical problems of sin, punishment, and
atonement. Hawthorne's exploration of these themes was related to the sense
of guilt he felt about the roles of his ancestors in the 17th-century persecution
of Quakers and in the 1692 witchcraft trials of Salem, Massachusetts.

By then he had already begun writing The Scarlet Letter (1850), a novel
about the adulterous Puritan Hester Prynne, who loyally refuses to reveal the
name of her partner. Regarded as his masterpiece and as one of the classics of
American literature, The Scarlet Letter reveals both Hawthorne's superb
craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed
guilt and anxiety in the human soul.

In 1850, Hawthorne moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he enjoyed
the friendship of the novelist Herman Melville, an admirer of Hawthorne's work.
At Lenox, Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he
traced the decadence of Puritanism in an old New England family, and A
Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and
Boys (1853), which retold classical legends. During a short stay in West
Newton, Massachusetts, he produced The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told
Tales (1852), which show his continuing preoccupation with the themes of guilt
and pride, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel inspired by his life at
Brook Farm.

11. Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, novelist, and playwright, whose
voluminous works provided the single greatest impetus to the romantic
movement.

Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, in Besanon, and was educated
both privately and in Paris schools. He was a precocious child, deciding at an
early age to become a writer. In 1817 he was honored by the French Academy
for a poem, and five years later, he published his first volume of poetry, Odes et
posies diverses (Miscellaneous Odes and Poems). This was followed by the
novels Han d'Islande (Han of Iceland, 1823) and Bug-Jargal (1824), and the
poems Odes et ballades (Odes and Ballads, 1826). In the preface to his long
historical drama Cromwell (1827), Hugo made a plea for freedom from the
classical restrictions. The plea quickly became the manifesto of the romantic
school. Censors banned Hugo's second drama, Marion de Lorme (1829; trans.
1872), based on the life of a 17th-century French courtesan. Hugo answered
the ban on February 25, 1830, when his poetic drama, Hernani, had a
tumultuous premiere that ensured the success of romanticism. Hernani was
adapted by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi for his opera Ernani (1844).
The period 1829-1843 was the most productive of Hugo's career. His
great historical novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831; trans. 1833), a tale
set in 15th-century Paris, made him popular and brought him, in 1841,
election to the French Academy. In another novel of this period, Claude Gueux
(1834), he eloquently indicted the French penal and social systems. He wrote
several well-received volumes of lyric poetry, including Les Orientales (1829),
Les feuilles d'automne (Autumn Leaves, 1831), Les chants du crpuscule (Songs
of Twilight, 1835), Les voix intrieures (Inner Voices, 1837), and Les rayons et
les ombres (Sunbeams and Shadows, 1840). His dramatic successes included
Le roi s'amuse (The King Amuses Himself, 1832), adapted by Verdi for the opera
Rigoletto (1851); the prose drama Lucrce Borgia (1833); and the melodrama
Ruy Blas (1838; trans. 1850). Les burgraves (The Governors, 1843), however,
was a complete failure.


Hugo's disappointment over Les burgraves was overshadowed in the
same year by the drowning of one of his daughters and her husband. He
turned from poetry and took a more active role in politics. He had been raised
in a Bonapartist home, and as a young man he had become a Royalist. In 1845
he was made a peer of France by King Louis Philippe, but by the time of the
Revolution of 1848, Hugo was a Republican. In 1851, following the
unsuccessful revolt against President Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon
III, Hugo fled to Belgium. In 1855 he began a 15-year-long exile on the island of
Guernsey.
While in exile Hugo wrote the fiercely scurrilous verse satire, Napolon le
petit (The Little Napoleon, 1852), the satiric poems Les chtiments
(Punishments, 1853), the volume of lyric verse Les contemplations (1856), and
the first volume of his epic poem La lgende des sicles (The Legend of the
Ages, 1859-1883). On Guernsey he completed his longest and most famous
work, Les misrables (1862; trans. 1862), a novel that vividly describes and
condemns the social injustice of 19th-century France.
Hugo returned to France after the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870,
and resumed his role in politics. He was elected first to the National Assembly
and later to the Senate. Among the most notable works of the final 15 years of
his life are Ninety-Three (1874; trans. 1874), a novel about the French
Revolution; and L'art d'tre grand-pre (The Art of Being a Grandfather, 1877),
lyric poems of his family life.
Hugo's works set a standard for the rhetorical and poetic taste of
generations of French youth, and he is still considered one of the finest French
poets. After his death on May 22, 1885, in Paris, his body lay in state under
the Arc de Triomphe and was later borne, in accord with his wishes, on a
pauper's hearse and buried in the Panthon, the burial place of many famous
French citizens.
12. Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), probably the best-known and, to many
people, the greatest English novelist of the 19th century. A moralist, satirist,
and social reformer, Dickens crafted complex plots and striking characters that
capture the panorama of English society.

Dickenss novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal
treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. But
he presents this criticism through the lives of characters that seem to live and
breathe. Paradoxically, they often do so by being flamboyantly larger than life:
The 20th-century poet and critic T. S. Eliot wrote, Dickenss characters are
real because there is no one like them. Yet though these characters range
through the sentimental, grotesque, and humorous, few authors match
Dickenss psychological realism and depth. Dickenss novels rank among the
funniest and most gripping ever written, among the most passionate and
persuasive on the topic of social justice, and among the most psychologically
telling and insightful works of fiction. They are also some of the most masterful
works in terms of artistic form, including narrative structure, repeated motifs,
consistent imagery, juxtaposition of symbols, stylization of characters and
settings, and command of language.
Dickens established (and made profitable) the method of first publishing
novels in serial installments in monthly magazines. He thereby reached a larger
audience including those who could only afford their reading on such an
installment plan. This form of publication soon became popular with other
writers in Britain and the United States.
Dickens published 15 novels, one of which was left unfinished at his
death. These novels are, in order of publication with serialization dates given
first: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-1837; 1837); The
Adventures of Oliver Twist (1837-1839; 1838); The Life and Adventures of
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839; 1839); The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841;
1841); Barnaby Rudge (1841); The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
(1843-1844; 1844); Dombey and Son (1846-1848; 1848); The Personal History
of David Copperfield (1849-1850; 1850); Bleak House (1852-1853; 1853); Hard
Times (1854); Little Dorrit (1855-1857; 1857); A Tale of Two Cities (1859); Great
Expectations (1860-1861; 1861); Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865; 1865); and The
Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished; 1870).

13. Jonathan Swift

Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of disease. Both were originally the same trade, and still
continue.
Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)
Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman.
Moral and Diverting
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Anglo-Irish satirist and political
pamphleteer, considered one of the greatest masters of English prose and one
of the most impassioned satirists of human folly and pretension. His many
pamphlets, prose, letters, and poetry were all marked by highly effective and
economical language.
Swift was born in Dublin on November 30, 1667, and educated at Trinity
College in that city. He obtained employment in England in 1689 as secretary
to the diplomat and writer Sir William Temple. Swift's relations with his
employer were not amicable, and in 1694 the young man went back to Ireland,
where he took religious orders. Effecting a reconciliation with Temple, he
returned to Temple's household in 1696. There he supervised the education of
Esther Johnson, daughter of the widowed companion to Temple's sister. Swift
remained with Temple until Temple's death in 1699. Swift's stay, although
frequently marred by quarrels with his employer, gave him the time for an
immense amount of concentrated reading and for writing.
Swift's masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World,
more popularly titled Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726; it
met with instant success. Swift's satire was originally intended as an allegorical
and acidic attack on the vanity and hypocrisy of contemporary courts,
statesmen, and political parties, but in the writing of his book, which is
presumed to have taken more than six years, he incorporated his ripest
reflections on human society. Gulliver's Travels is, therefore, a savagely bitter
work, mocking all humankind. Nonetheless, it is so imaginatively, wittily, and
simply written that it became and has remained a favorite children's book.



Swift's last years, after the deaths of Stella and Vanessa, were
overshadowed by a growing loneliness and dread of insanity. He suffered
frequent attacks of vertigo, and a period of mental decay ended with his death
on October 19, 1745. He was buried in his own cathedral beside the coffin of
Stella. His epitaph, written by him in Latin, reads Here lies the body of
Jonathan Swift, D.D., dean of this cathedral, where burning indignation can no
longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveler, and imitate if you can a man who was
an undaunted champion of liberty.

14. William Golding
William Golding (1911-1993), British novelist, who won the Nobel Prize
for literature in 1983. William Gerald Golding was born at Saint Columb Minor
in Cornwall and educated at Brasenose College at the University of Oxford,
where he studied English literature. Golding spent a short time working in the
theater as a writer and actor. He then trained to be a teacher, a profession he
left during World War II (1939-1945), when he served in the Royal Navy.

After the war Golding returned to writing. His first novel, The Lord of the
Flies (1954; motion picture by English director Peter Brook, 1963), was
extremely successful and is considered one of the great works of 20th-century
literature. Based on Golding's own wartime experiences, it is the story of a
group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island after a plane crash. An
allegory of the intrinsic corruption of human nature, it chronicles the boys'
descent from a state of relative innocence to one of revengeful barbarism.
After Lord of the Flies he wrote several novels with similar themes of good
and evil in human nature, including The Inheritors (1955) and Pincher Martin
(1956). Much of Golding's writing explores moral dilemmas and human
reactions in extreme situations. His trilogyconsisting of Rites of Passage
(1980), winner of the Booker Prize, an annual award for outstanding literary
achievement in the Commonwealth of Nations; Close Quarters (1987); and Fire
Down Below (1989)reflects Golding's interest in the sea and sailing. His other
works include two collections of essays, The Hot Gates (1965) and A Moving
Target (1982); and one play, The Brass Butterfly (1958). Golding was knighted
in 1988 (see Knight). His last novel, The Double Tongue, was published
posthumously in 1995.
15. Robert Louis Stevenson
, , , , ,,
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet.
Virginibus Puerisque, "An Apology for Idlers"
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish novelist, essayist, and
poet, who contributed several classic works to children's literature. Robert
Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, and studied engineering and
then law at the University of Edinburgh. Since childhood, however, Stevenson's
natural inclination had been toward literature, and he eventually started
writing seriously.

Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis and often traveled in search of
warm climates to ease his illness. His earliest works are descriptions of his
journeysfor example, An Inland Voyage (1878), about a canoe trip through
Belgium and France in 1876, and Travels with a Donkey in the Cvennes
(1879), an account of a journey on foot through mountains in southern France
in 1878. In 1879 he traveled to California, where in 1880 he married Frances
Osbourne, an American divorce. They returned to Europe in 1880 but moved
to Saranac Lake, New York, in 1887. In 1888 they sailed from San Francisco on
a cruise across the South Pacific. In 1889 they settled in Samoa on the island
of Upolu in a final effort to restore Stevenson's health, but he died there five
years later.

Stevenson's popularity is based primarily on the exciting subject matter
of his adventure novels and fantasy stories. Treasure Island (1883) is a swiftly
paced story of a search for buried gold involving the boy hero Jim Hawkins and
the evil pirates Pew and Long John Silver. In the horror story The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), the extremes of good and evil appear
startlingly in one character when the physician Henry Jekyll discovers a drug
that changes him, first at will and later involuntarily, into the monster Hyde.
Kidnapped (1886) recounts the adventures of young David Balfour and the
proud outlaw Alan Breck. Stevenson's other adventure stories include The
Black Arrow (1888) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889).
Stevenson wrote skillfully in a variety of genres. He employed the forms
of essay and literary criticism in Virginibus Puerisque (1881), Familiar Studies of
Men and Books (1882), and Memories and Portraits (1887). Also critically well
received were such travel and autobiographical pieces as The Silverado
Squatters (1883), which records Stevenson's impressions of his stay at a
California mining camp; Across the Plains (1892); and In the South Seas (1896).
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), containing some of Stevenson's best-known
poems, is regarded by many as one of the finest collections of poetry for
children. His other verse collections include Underwoods (1887) and Ballads
(1890). Stevenson's short stories were published in The New Arabian Nights
(1882) and Island Nights' Entertainments (1893). He also collaborated with his
stepson, American writer Lloyd Osbourne, in writing the novels The Wrong Box
(1889) and The Wrecker (1892).