Robert Louis Stevenson

“ NA UMA. I believe the WRECKER ends well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four chapters make a good yarn - but pretty horrible. THE BEACH OF FALESA I still think well of, but it seems it's immoral and there's a to-do, and financially it may prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request sent to me, to make the young folks married properly before 'that night,' I refused; you will see what would be left of the yarn, had I consented. This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it at all ”

“ As I know you are always interested in novels, I must tell you that a new one is now entirely planned. It is to be called SOPHIA SCARLET, and is in two parts. Part I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The Overseers. No chapters, I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the first of which is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows and quarrels, and winds up with an explosion, if you please! I am just burning to get at Sophia, but I MUST do this Samoan journalism - that's a cursed duty. The first part of Sophia, bar the first twenty or thirty pages, writes itself ”