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An Inland Voyage

By Robert Louis Stevenson

1877


Table of Contents


[A Note on the Text]

Our copy-text for this HTML edition is An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson, with a Travel Guide to the route by Andrew Sanger (1948- ), Cockbird Press, Ltd., P.O. Box 356, Heathfield, East Sussex TN21 9QF, copyright 1991. ISBN 1-87-3054-02-5, call number 910.4.

We have not included the excellent copyrighted notes, nor the beautiful illustrations, engravings and water colors, copyright 1991 by Michael Reynolds. You should definitely buy this book if you are planning to follow RLS's route either by water or road, as it gives much helpful information.

We have also compared this edition with the Project Gutenberg ("nvoyg10.txt") text, scanned and proofed by David Price, ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, who has contributed all or almost all of Stevenson's works to Internet readers. We have rendered the French phrases in italics rather than capital letters, and used HTML entities to accent the characters as in the original. To the PG edition we add the appendix, originally Chapter 4 of Across the Plains, an account of RLS's walk to the south of Paris after his canoe trip in the north of France. We also add two prefaces and the dedication from Sanger's book.

Although we have not supplied notes to this edition, we should point out a few matters gleaned from Sanger's introduction and notes. The trip was made in the fall of 1876 by RLS ("Arethusa" after his canoe) and his friend Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson ("Cigarette" after the name of his canoe).

The first part, in Belgium, passed through heavily industrial areas and many canal locks, proving to be not much of a vacation. They then went by rail to France, starting at Mauberge, and ending at Pontoise, close to the Seine.

Canoeing, in small wooden boats that today would probably be called kayaks, because they were narrow, decked, and paddled with double-bladed paddles, had become popular in England, France, and neighboring countries, after John MacGregor's books of his "Rob Roy" cruises, from 1865.

The epilogue was actually a walking trip from Barbizon, a bohemian artists' colony frequented by, among others, Corot, Millet, and Theodore Rousseau, and, later, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley. George Sand was among the writers. Sanger says the artists' inn there, the Augerge de Siron, has now become a luxurious hotel and restaurant, the Hôtellerie du Bas-Bréau. The owners claim RLS wrote Treasure Island there. It may cost more than 6000F to stay in his room, no. 1! Compare that with Osbourne's preface.


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