I would like to thank the following for their help with my research: the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library; the British Library; the London Library; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; New York Public Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; les Archives de l’Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris; the Pacific Room of Apia Library, Upolu, Western Samoa; the Stevenson-Osbourne archive at the Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum, St Helena, Napa, California; the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum at Saranac Lake, New York; the Writers’ Museum, Lady Stair’s House, Edinburgh; the Stevenson Museum at Villa Vailima, Upolu, Western Samoa; and the National University of Samoa. Anyone involved in Stevenson research has reason to be grateful for the website maintained by Richard Dury on behalf of the Association of Stevenson Scholars, an invaluable resource.
I am indebted to many people for help with specific queries, ideas, leads, suggestions and practical assistance during the writing of this book: Stuart Airlie, Scott Ashley, Mark Bostridge, Kate Clanchy, Aisling Foster, Lyndall Gordon, Siamon Gordon, Elaine Greig, Richard Holmes, Nicola Ireland, Andrew Kelly, Patrick McGuinness, Robyn Marsack, Agnès Masson, Ernest Mehew, Barry Menikoff, Andrew Nash, Nicholas Rankin, Julia Reid, Graham Robb, Karen Steele, Roger Swearingen, Belinda Thomson and Jenny Uglow. Mike Delahunt provided hot drinks and helpful guidance on a freezing January day at Baker’s Cottage, Devon Jersild drove me there; while at the other end of my travels Gatoloai Tili Afamasaga, Mata’ino Te’o and Juliana Tevaga all helped me to a better understanding of Stevenson’s years in Samoa. In Edinburgh Isabel Schmidt and Alison Harman have been kind hosts, as have Belinda and Richard Thomson and John and Felicitas Macfie, current owners of 17 Heriot Row.
At HarperCollins, I would like to thank Richard Johnson and Robert Lacey for their friendly support and deft editorial skills and Holley Miles for her work on the illustrations. I am especially grateful to the trustees and administrators of the Leverhulme Trust for their award of an emeritus grant for travel expenses related to my research and to the Arts Council for a Writers’ Award in 2003.
Claire Harman
AUGUST 2004
I am grateful to the following for permission to quote from manuscript material in their possession:
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
R.L.S. Silverado Museum, St Helena, California
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
While I have made every effort to contact copyright holders, in some cases this has not proved possible. The publishers would be grateful to hear from anyone who has inadvertently been overlooked.
Claire Harman
APRIL 2005