Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson

“Buckton’s scholarly synthesis pushes us to reconsider the relationship between travel writing and fiction in Stevenson’s body of work and to examine the intersections between issues such as colonialism and same-sex desire across genres.” — Victorian Studies

“Buckton convincingly argues for continued consideration of Stevenson as a writer who productively engaged with the social concerns of the contemporaneous moment.” — Rocky Mountain Review

“Buckton’s book offers a series of original, and at times, provocative reappraisals of some of Stevenson’s most undervalued writings.” — English Literature in Transition

“Overall this sophisticated approach to Stevenson’s writings offers an admirable heuristic for bringing into conjunction his literal and literary journeys.” — Romanticism & Victorianism on the Net

”Oliver Buckton’s informed and sophisticated book skillfully combines...theoretical preoccupations with a meticulous exploration of Stevenson’s writing, probing the influence of travel on his fictional and nonfictional prose works.... A valuable addition to the study of nineteenth-century travel writing and fiction.” — Journal of British Studies

“Highly recommended.”

“The first book centered on the influence of travel on Stevenson’s writing from the beginning to the end of his career.... By largely exempting the most often examined of Stevenson’s texts, it focuses necessary attention on the others, particularly the juvenile fiction and the travel writing.... Thoroughly researched both historically and critically.”

“Oliver Buckton’s lucid study moves with grace and discernment
from close analyses of literary texts to informed and
consistently informative investigations of culture and colonial
politics in the Victorian fin de siècle. Buckton shows
how a commitment to ‘cruising’—as a mode of travel, a cast
of mind, and a method of composition—enabled Stevenson
to produce a body of literature that is at once historically
aware and aesthetically sophisticated. Cruising with Robert Louis
Stevenson will be indispensable not just to scholars of Stevenson
but to all readers interested in the literature of modern
empire.”

— University of Virginia

“Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson makes a vital contribution
to the resurgent critical interest in Stevenson’s increasingly
fraught career. By tracing Stevenson’s enduring interest in
‘cruising’—the mobility that characterizes his travel narratives,
historical romances, and writings on Samoa—Buckton
unravels this great writer’s sharpened awareness of imperial
oppression. Among its many achievements, this fine book
makes it strikingly clear why the wandering protagonist of
the historical romance David Balfour has profound political
links with Stevenson’s own troubled excursions in the South
Pacific.”

— UCLA