The California Writers Memorial Grove (incl Hammett).

(Top) Robert Louis Stevenson, NYPL
(Bottom) Dashiell Hammett, ca. 1934

As Kristen Caven explains, the California Writers Memorial Grove at Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland is an effort by the California Writers Club (est. 1909) to plant trees in honor of writers who have contributed to the West's literary landscape. The initiative was announced in October 1930. Each ceremony usually featured speeches, readings, and tree planting. Two honorees were Robert Louis Stevenson (in 1942) and Dashiell Hammett (in 1984). Go here to see a complete list of writers featured.

• Images of the grove and the original plan for the grove 

Exhibition: "Rogues Gallery—Faces of Crime 1870–1917."

The exhibition "Rogues Gallery: Faces of Crime 1870–1917" is on view until December 1 at Edinburgh's General Register House. It provides a look at early Scottish mugshots and related crime documentation, including items pertaining to the real-life counterpart of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll.

The many sides of Susan Fenimore Cooper.

The online Smithsonian exhibition "Early Women in Science" includes Susan Fenimore Cooper, the daughter of James Fenimore Cooper recognized as an early naturalist via her work Rural Hours (1850). The younger Cooper's novel Elinor Wyllys; or, The Young Folk of Longbridge (1846) features a mystery, although she warned in "The Talent of Reading Wisely" (Feb. 1892) of the dangers to youth of crime novels. She also did not support women's suffrage (see "Female Suffrage: A Letter to the Christian Women of America," 1870).

The exhibition also features noted garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, whose surname is so prominently featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (her brother, Rev. Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Stevenson).

Related posts: Constance Fenimore Woolson
(great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper)

BL's "Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians."

1877 Chatto & Windus edition
of Wilkie Collins's
The Moonstone

The British Library's online exhibition on "Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians" has some items of interest for mystery fans:

• Under "the Gothic" are features on "The Victorian Supernatural," "An Introduction to The Woman in White," and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• Under "The Imperial Gothic" are works by H. Rider Haggard and Richard Marsh, as well as Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone.

• Under "Crime and Crime Fiction" are "Crime in Oliver Twist," "Crime in Great Expectations," and "Juvenile Crime in the 19th Century." Also featured (by Judith Flanders, author of The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime that I reviewed) are "The Creation of the Police and the Rise of Detective Fiction" "Jack the Ripper," "Murder as Entertainment," and "Penny Dreadfuls" (including The Boy Detective, 1865).

Note that the attribution for Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864) is incorrect; it is not by the pseudonymous Andrew Forrester (James Redding Ware), but rather William Stephens Hayward.

Update. The BL has corrected the attribution for Revelations of a Lady Detective.

Conference on weird fiction scheduled.

Algernon Blackwood, NYPL

The conference "The Weird: Fugitive Fictions/Hybrid Genres" will be held at the University of London on November 8, 2013. A keynote speaker is S. T. Joshi (who has done much work on H. P. Lovecraft). The conference call for papers mentions interest in papers on Lovecraft and similar writers (probably including Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Robert Louis Stevenson), but also indicates the intent to cover topics such as "modernism and the weird."

In Search of Scotland: Buchan, McDermid, et al.

Arthur Conan Doyle, n.d.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Div.

University of Otago's "In Search of Scotland" online exhibition includes John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle, Val McDermid, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The many sides of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson
at age 25. NYPL

The online exhibition "Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850–1894" from the University of South Carolina Libraries Rare Books and Special Collections includes this great cover from Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher" (1884), artwork from various editions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as some interesting material on the relationship between Stevenson and poet W. E. Henley. Also featured are two portraits of Stevenson (posted here and here) by John Singer Sargent, who told Henry James that Stevenson was "the most intense creature I had ever met."

What might have been: Collins and Drood.

Wilkie Collins,
ca. 1880–90.
Library of Congress,
Prints & Photos Div

The Wilkie Collins Society has issued Addenda and Corrigenda 7, a selection of previously unpublished or hard-to-find letters, including one that confirms that Collins was asked to complete The Mystery of Edwin Drood after the death of his friend Charles Dickens and another that records Collins's reaction to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The publication is available free to society members and for a modest £5 (approx. US$8) to nonmembers, which can be paid via PayPal; contact Paul Lewis for details.

Green for Greene: Book fetches $24K.

As PhiloBiblos noted, a first edition of Graham Greene's Rumour at Nightfall (1931) garnered £17,000 (about US$24,500) at Bloomsbury's Dec 14 auction. Greene viewed the Conrad-influenced Rumour, in which a journalist hunts for an outlaw in Spain, as a very bad novel and refused to reprint it after its 1932 US edition. (Factoid of the day: According to a NYT review of Greene's The Name of Action [1931], Greene was related to Robert Louis Stevenson.)

Journal gems from JSTOR.

JSTOR announced on Sept. 6 that it would permit free access to issues of certain periodicals published before 1923 (list here). This means unfettered access to items such as the following:

• "The Modern Novel," by Amelia E. Barr, North American Review, Nov. 1894. "...[I]f people enjoy the game between criminals and detectives, the question is simply whether the exhibition is, or is not, a moral one—whether the details of crime, the telling of how it was done, how it was concealed, and how it was found out, may not be a kind of criminal school, for those whose inclinations lead them in that direction" (593–94).

William A. Pinkerton,
left, and Robert A.
Pinkerton, ca. 1855.
Library of Congress

• "Detective Surveillance of Anarchists," by Robert A. Pinkerton (son of Allan Pinkerton), North American Review Nov 1901. "The picture of the anarchist drawn by most people, a bearded, drunken, lazy creature, is not at all in line with the facts" (616).

•  "A Short-Story Reading List," by Raymond W. Pence, English Journal May 1920. Recommends the following for teaching students about effective writing:


--G. K. Chesterton.  The Innocence of Father Brown, The Wisdom of Father Brown.

--Arthur Conan Doyle. "The Adventure of the Dying Detective," "The Dancing Men,"  "The Final Problem," "The Norwood Builder," "A Scandal in Bohemia," "Silver Blaze," "The Speckled Band."

--Henry James. "The Turn of the Screw"

--Arthur Morrison. "On the Stairs"

--Edgar Allan Poe. "The Gold Bug,"  "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter."

--Melville Davisson Post. Stories from Uncle Abner: "The Doomdorf Mystery," "An Act of God," The Straw Man," "The Adopted Daughter."

--Robert Louis Stevenson. "Markheim," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

Carnegie Mellon's Posner Collection.

"I clapped a pistol to his
head." Illust. Sidney Paget
The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes

Carnegie Mellon's Posner Collection allows bibliophiles to look at the rare books in its collection online, page by page. The following books from the collection may be of interest to genre fans:

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first ed. (1892), by Arthur Conan Doyle, illus. Sidney Paget

• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, first ed. (1894), by Arthur Conan Doyle, illus. Sidney Paget

• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, limited ed. (1952), by Robert Louis Stevenson, illus. Edward A. Wilson

• The Time Machine: An Invention (1895), by H. G. Wells (dedicated to W. E. Henley)

BYU exhibition, Literary Worlds.

Caricature of Chesterton
by David Low from
Lions and Lambs (1928),
NYPL

The Literary Worlds: Illumination of the Mind exhibition in Special Collections at Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library focuses on the creative processes of writers. Among those included are Louisa May Alcott, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Orson Scott Card, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Zane Grey, Eden Phillpotts, and Robert Louis Stevenson. It's on display until June, and some materials can be accessed online. I'm rather astounded that the précis on Chesterton fails to mention Father Brown.

Unlikely Mystery Fan #2: Winston Churchill.

Part of a series on unexpected individuals who enjoy or enjoyed mystery-related works and authors.

Winston Churchill,
n.d. Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs
Division

Perhaps not surprisingly for someone who later broke out of a Boer prison camp, the future British prime minister was fond of the works of H. Rider Haggard, reading King Solomon's Mines several times. As Carlo D'Este reports in Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War 1874–1945 (10), Haggard met with Churchill in 1888, expressing apprehension about the prospect: "I hope he will not put me through a cross-examination about my unworthy productions." Apparently it was such a meeting, but Haggard sent Churchill a copy of Allan Quatermain afterward.

Another reported Churchill favorite: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson this week on BBC Radio 7; happy birthday, Eric Ambler.

In "The Short History of Gothic" series, BBC Radio 7 is featuring Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim" (1885), read by Notting Hill's Hugh Bonneville, in which a thief receives an unsettling surprise. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Let's also remember that espionage master and screenwriter Eric Ambler (Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, etc.) was born today in London in 1909 and recall Michael Gilbert's words about him in Crime in Good Company: "[Ambler] says that he was an unpleasant child, but produces no evidence of this beyond a single attempt to blow up his own house with nitroglycerin."
About the image: Robert Louis Stevenson, NYPL

Literary Edinburgh.

In honor of Ian Rankin's 50th birthday (which occurred on April 28th), the Guardian offers a photo gallery of Literary Edinburgh, including residents such as Alexander McCall Smith.

About the image: Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the authors included in the Guardian's Literary Edinburgh gallery. Photo, NYPL.

At Princeton: "The Author's Portrait."

Through July 5 Princeton University's Firestone Library is displaying more than 100 portraits of writers and poets; the few featured online include George Bernard Shaw, Robert Louis Stevenson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others.

New Web site on Robert Louis Stevenson.

With funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, a new Web site has been established that focuses on Scottish native son Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94). Included are a biography; a look at his various travels (including his time in Monterey, CA); books such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped; annotations on his letters; photographs; a works chronology; associates of Stevenson such as poet W. E. Henley, Fanny Sitwell, and Andrew Lang; and a lot more.

About the image: Robert Louis Stevenson, NYPL.

Clues publishes Scottish crime fiction issue.

Clues: A Journal of Detection has just published vol. 26, no. 2, a special theme issue on Scottish crime fiction. Guest edited by Gill Plain (University of St. Andrews, UK), the issue features articles on James Hogg, Paul Johnston, Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as J. E. Preston Muddock's Dick Donovan, a Glasgow detective that appeared alongside Sherlock Holmes in the pages of the Strand. Go here for the table of contents; here for more about the journal in general (including subscription information).

Plus ça change...

I've been perusing My First Book, in which several notable writers (e.g., Conan Doyle, Kipling, Bret Harte, Marie Corelli) discuss their first published work. Although this edition was published in 1897 by Chatto & Windus, today's writers will detect a number of familiar themes. To wit:

"... I read that whatever success I had met with as a writer of fiction was due to my literary friends and 'nepotic criticism.'" -- H. Rider Haggard (135; seen at left)

" 'I want to learn to write very, very well indeed,' he suddenly added . . . 'then I'll be able to earn heaps of money.'

"It rose to my lips to answer him that it was not always the books written very, very well that brought in the biggest heaps of money; that if heaps of money were his chiefest hope he would be better advised to devote his energies to the glorious art of self-advertisement and the gentle craft of making friends upon the Press." -- Jerome K. Jerome (x)

"[I]t is a curious fact ... that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. ... it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will make an admirable subject for the novelist's art." -- Mary Elizabeth Braddon (110-11)

"Anybody can write a short story--a bad one, I mean--who has industry and paper and time enough; but not everyone may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (298)

Jerome's "glorious art of self-advertisement" seems to resemble today's Blatant Self-Promotion (BSP).