Robert Louis Stevenson
Published: 1882
Total Pages: 52
Get eBook
“The Story of a Lie”has a curious bibliography. It was written in August, 1879 on a voyage from Glasgow to New York, “in a slantindicular cabin, with the table playing bob-cherry with the ink-bottle.” It was sold to Kegan Paul’s “withered babe, the New Quarterly,” a periodical of brief existence, where it appeared in October, 1879, having been forwarded to Mr. Sidney Colvin immediately on the author’s arrival in America. R. L. S. was anxious to know what impression it made upon his friends, who were told to “ remember that it was written at sea in great anxiety of mind,” but it did not, in the agitated history of his affairs, then attract much notice. Nearly three years later, when Stevenson was at Davos, some one prepared “The Story of a Lie” for book publication in England.