5 h 43 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 5 h 43 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
How much trouble can one small lie bring when fear, pride and hidden shame keep it alive?
In Tales and Fantasies, Robert Louis Stevenson gathers three short tales of misadventure, dark secrets and choices that go wrong. People try to avoid embarrassment, hide their thoughts or protect the face they show the world. A poor decision becomes the start of something larger, and the distance between private shame and public appearance leaves little room for comfort.
These stories reveal another side of the Scottish writer known for Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson keeps the pace moving through incident, vivid pictures and clean, rhythmic prose. Scottish settings and a strict moral conscience shape a shadowed world where bad luck matters, but so do the lies people tell themselves.
What you’ll discover
- Small choices, large troubles Follow the misadventures that begin when fear or pride makes a poor choice seem easier.
- The weight of secrets Explore the gap between the face people show and the thoughts they keep hidden.
- A Scottish moral world Enter stories shaped by Scottish settings, strict habits and questions of personal responsibility.
- Stories that move Enjoy compact tales driven by vivid scenes, quick incident and clear, rhythmic prose.
- Stevenson beyond adventure Discover his taste for hidden shame, bad luck and the trouble a lie can bring.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy Edinburgh streets, comic bad luck, ghostly suspense and stories about fathers and sons. It offers short tales with sharp turns, warm humor and a dark shadow close behind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Fat Clerk Pawns His Mother's Watch
- Ten Years Later He Comes Home Rich
- A Lonely House and a Cab Without End
- A Drunk Old Man Knows a Great Doctor
- A Student Learns to Ask No Questions
- Dick Collects People and Quarrels with His Father
- A Kind Lie Grows Out of Control
- Small Failings Grow Into Big Disasters
Who’s who
- John NicholsonA stout, good-natured Edinburgh clerk whose clumsy mistakes keep multiplying, and who longs to be forgiven by his stern father.
- Flora MackenzieThe girl John admires in his youth, who is steady, practical and unsentimental when he sees her again years later.
- FettesA young anatomy assistant in Edinburgh, later a drunk old man in an inn, who is haunted by what he agreed to ignore.
- Wolfe MacfarlaneA clever, charming and unscrupulous senior assistant who argues that the world is divided into lions and lambs.
- Dick NasebyA young Englishman who studies people for pleasure and wants to heal the quarrel with his father and win Esther.
- Esther Van TrompA proud, sullen, warmhearted girl who worships a father she has never known and loves Dick for being his friend.
- Peter Van TrompA fallen charmer known as the Admiral, who sponges on others and plays whatever part suits a kind audience.
- Squire NasebyA hot-tempered, upright landowner who is certain he is right and loves his son, but often lets anger speak for him.
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Racconti e fantasie in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Racconti e fantasie
A fat Edinburgh clerk pawns a watch, loses four hundred pounds, and starts a chain of mishaps that will not stop.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
One weak moment can undo a whole life. Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish writer who died in 1894, knew it well.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Fat Clerk Pawns His Mother's Watch
The first tale opens in Edinburgh with John Nicholson, a stout and cheerful young man who studies law in his father's office. His father is a stern man who lives by a narrow church creed and the gloom of his house. John's loud laughter sounds to him like a weak mind.
John follows Alan Houston, an idle and handsome friend his father has forbidden. One Saturday John is sent to pay four hundred pounds into the bank. On the way, Alan begs a small loan, and John pawns his dead mother's gold watch under a false name. The errand runs late, and the bank is shut.
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What is Tales and Fantasies about?
It collects three stories by Robert Louis Stevenson. One follows a clerk in Edinburgh whose mistakes snowball, one is a dark tale about two medical men and a supply of bodies, and one shows a kind lie that grows.
Who are Fettes and Macfarlane in The Body Snatcher?
They were once assistants to an Edinburgh anatomy teacher. Fettes later becomes a drunk in the inn parlor at Debenham, while Macfarlane is a famous London doctor. Their meeting on the stairs starts the story.
What are the Disruption Principles in The Misadventures of John Nicholson?
They are the strict beliefs of a Scottish church party. Mr. Nicholson treats them as the center of his life and his home, though the narrator says an English reader could never make sense of them.
The author
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850–1894 · Scottish novelist and poet
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist and poet, born in Edinburgh in 1850. He wrote Treasure Island (1883), A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), and Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). He settled in Samoa in 1890 and died there in 1894.
More by Robert Louis Stevenson
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