EDINBURGH: PICTURESQUE NOTES Robert Louis Stevenson 1 873429 76 2 £7.95 128 pp with text illustrations Trade pbk with flaps 140 x 215 mm portrait Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her crags. In a word and above all, she is a curiosity. Robert Louis Stevenson on Edinburgh First published in 1879, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes is amongst the most vivid of Stevenson's writings. The romantic and the louche rub shoulders in this eulogy of Stevenson's birthplace. His passion for Auld Reekie never clouded his wry wit, and his enthusiasm for the picturesque detail and the savoury historical anecdote will delight readers today as much as they scandalised contemporaries. Perhaps best known as the author of Treasure Island (1883) and other children's literature, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a prolific travel writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist. Born in Edinburgh, he was a keen traveller throughout his life. He wrote many accounts inspired by his trips including An Island Voyage (1878) based on his canoeing adventures in France and Belgium, and a year later, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. His tales of travelling on an emigrant ship and train to California, was posthumously published in The Amateur Emigrant in 1895. In 1888, Stevenson left England for good and settled in Samoa until his death. It was on the island that he became known as 'Tusitala' or 'The Teller of Tales'.