The Silverado Squatters - Softcover

Stesner, David Michael; Stevenson, Robert Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159818539X ISBN 13: 9781598185393

Publisher: Alan Rodgers Books, 2005

Synopsis

The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a center of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near neighbors rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon.

The author's experiences at Silverado were recorded in a journal he called "Silverado Sketches", parts of which he incorporated into Silverado Squatters in 1883 while living in Bournemouth, England, with other tales appearing in "Essays of Travel" and "Across the Plains". Many of his notes on the scenery around him later provided much of the descriptive detail for Treasure Island (1883).

About this title

From the Publisher:

This book is a large print version using a minimum of 16 point type in a 6 by 9 inch size and perfect bound - a paperback. As with all Quiet Vision print books, it use a high grade, acid free paper for long life.

From the Back Cover:

Just as Peter Mayle captured the mood an characters of Provence, Robert Louis Stevenson evokes California's wine country and some of the unique characters he found there while honeymooning with Bay Area native Frances Osbourne and her stepson in the summer of 1880. The new family spent nine weeks in Calistoga and the Napa Valley, residing in a bunkhouse of an abandoned silver mine, doing what visitors to the area do today - living graciously (given the at times daunting constraints of their rustic adopted home), admiring the region's serene beauty, and sipping samples of the local elixirs. The author's first work published on this side of the Atlantic (with the exception of a few poems in The Atlantic Monthly), The Silverado Squatters laid the groundwork for the immense popularity Stevenson came to enjoy here. This classic, beautifully written account of a sojourn in the late-nineteenth century wine country by one of Northern California's literary forefathers provides a vivid, delightful complement to an actual visit to the region today.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alan Rodgers Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 159818539X
• ISBN 13: 9781598185393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108