Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His many books include Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (National Book Award finalist); Adventurer: The Life and Times of Giacomo Casanova; The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age; and Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist). He lives in Newton, MA.

“Damrosch brings to Stevenson’s life the calm, humane interpretive powers that he deployed with such success in . . . The Club. . . . Stevenson was a master of sensory clarity, [and] learning how he achieved his ‘kinetic’ effects is one of the great pleasures of this excellent book.”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal“Damrosch makes a convincing case for [Stevenson] as a skilled stylist and innovative narrator. . . . I was inspired—and thankful—to reread Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I hadn’t read in decades, and which is a masterpiece. It’s a marvel of long elegant sentences, of precise word choice, of the economy with which Stevenson draws and uses his characters, and of sheer fun in how the plot moves and the puzzles are solved.”—Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review“Damrosch restores Stevenson to the literary prominence he richly deserves—not only as a creator of heart-stopping tales but as a deeply introspective, stylistically daring writer whose life was just as adventurous as his fiction.”—Tobias Grey, Washington PostA Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025Named a Best Book of 2025 by The EconomistListed in Washington Post’s “50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2025”A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2025 A World Today Journal Top 25 Book of 2025Named a Top 25 Book of 2025 by Christian Science MonitorNamed to Literary Hub’s “Ultimate Best Books of 2025 List”An Air Mail Top 10 Book of 2025Selected for “5 Books We Loved This Week,” New York Times Book Review“A generous and capacious account. . . . All is well paced, with satisfying touches of offhand laconic wit. It is a fitting tribute to Tusitala, the master storyteller.”—Margaret Drabble, Times Literary Supplement“Damrosch . . . avoids both idolatry and iconoclasm. Well-paced and thoroughly researched, this new biography never assumes that the reader has a prior acquaintance with Stevenson. Damrosch tells the reader not just what happens in Stevenson’s books, but why they should care.”—The Economist“Shrewd, convincing and beguiling.”—William Boyd, Times Literary Supplement“Damrosch will be a superb guide to [Stevenson’s] life and work.”—Mathew Lyons, Broken Compass“Damrosch takes us through his story in a relaxed style and at a steady pace. . . . This charming book is full of embedded illustrations, and is graced by a number of colour plates.”—Michael Wheeler, Church Times“A cracking biography.”—Richard Bath, Scottish Field“In this biography told as an adventure story, Leo Damrosch convincingly portrays R. L. Stevenson as one of the most endearing writers in the English language.”—Alberto Manguel, author of A Reader on Reading“This will now stand as the standard modern life of Robert Louis Stevenson, its scholarly authority enhanced by its readability. The events of Stevenson’s extraordinary life are narrated with verve, and RLS himself is brought vividly before us, his complexity and charisma conveyed without any note of hagiography (or, conversely, critical debunking).”—Ian Duncan, University of California, Berkeley“This is a Stevenson biography aimed at readers of Stevenson. RLS sought adventure in his lifetime; his contemporaries were admiring and envious of his bold, restless spirit, and the twenty-first-century reader is no less likely to relish this quest to encounter the elemental forces of a powerful storm, a forty-below cold spell, or a desperate dash across the American continent to find the romantic partner of one’s dreams.”—William Sharpe, author of The Art of Walking: A History in 100 Images“In this superb and richly atmospheric biography, Damrosch brings all his fine scholarly attention to the strange world of Stevenson’s fictions and poetry, but also revels in his gloriously outspoken letters and his fraught but intensely vivid friendships. This is a large, beautiful, and mature biographic portrait.”—Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder“Is there a better biographer alive today than Leo Damrosch? His latest, a full-scale biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, is a brilliant storytelling achievement worthy of both its title and the redoubtable subject at its center. Stevenson lived more in his forty-four years than most do in a lifetime.”—Morten Høi Jensen, author of The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of “The Magic Mountain”