Jenni Calder & Ian Nimmo
A special series of three Bridge Readings to tie-in with Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature’s first city-wide reading campaign celebrating Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
Chaired by Rosemary Goring
"What a silly thing is popularity":
Robert Louis Stevenson and the two sides of celebrity.
The Herald's Literary Editor Rosemary Goring led this panel to discuss notions of fame and celebrity and RLS's pursuit of both. He was a celebrity in his time, but his position in the literary canon faded until the late 20th century when David Daiches's seminal works Robert Louis Stevenson (1947) and Stevenson and the Art of Fiction (1951) saw a re-evaluaton of his role as a writer. Through familial, historical and literary contexts, the panel looked at the duality of "popularity" (as RLS coined it). Jenni Calder is a renowned Scottish literary historian and author of numerous books including Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study; Ian Nimmo is the author of Walking with Murder: On the Kidnapped Trail and is currently working on another book on RLS.
Wednesday 28 February 2007
Leith Library, Edinburgh
