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About The Lantern Bearers (Unabridged)

‘The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public – a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.’ One of Robert Louis Stevenson’s bestselling works of his time, ‘The Lantern Bearers’ is a charming essay on the joys underlying realist literature. Sometimes mistakenly taken as a fictional narrative, the essay begins with three boys – of which Stevenson is one – who reside in a seaside town during the summer. Stevenson describes the various splendours of existence in the town, such as fishing, tide pools and the open sea air. The three boys begin a nighttime ritual in which they attach lanterns to their belts, hidden by their overcoats, meandering in the dark and engaging in discussions only for their own ears – a simple, but profound source of pleasure. It becomes an allegory for the importance of romance in realism; why writers ought to seek where joy lies in the everyday. This audiobook edition is brilliantly read by Robin Laing. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer. Best known for his novels Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , his worked spanned from romance and adventure writing to gothic dark realism. He remains one of the most translated authors in the world.