The Amateur Emigrant, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Definitive modern edition of Stevenson's intriguing account of his emigration from Scotland to California The Amateur Emigrant, an autobiographical account of Stevenson's voyage from Scotland to California in 1879, is a rich and provocative work of late-Victorian travel writing and cultural criticism. It describes vividly how Stevenson mixed with 'steerage' passengers aboard an Atlantic steamship and experienced the indignities of a transcontinental emigrant train. The Amateur Emigrant engages critically with Victorian ideas about class, race and gender, and makes an important contribution to the literature of emigration. Stevenson's middle-class family and friends found the work so transgressive that it was withdrawn from publication at proof stage. It was published in bowdlerised form in 1895 and since then has rarely been available in the form in which Stevenson composed it. Julia Reid is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Robert Louis Stevenson, Science, and the Fin de Siècle (2006) and is currently writing a monograph 'She Who Must be Obeyed' Matriarchy in Victorian Literature and Anthropology (forthcoming in 2019). Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-0-7486-6974-5 Barcode