While at the cottage I picked up a rather old looking volume from the bookshelf and spent a few hours "perusing" it. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's New Arabian Nights.
In the front cover was a picture that looks something like this one:
This is, quite frankly, the ruggedly handsome face that I had come to expect the author of such romantic prose and poetry to possess. Take a look at that moustache!
The book is actually a compilation of short stories in which a small group of characters regularly pop up, and intertwine all the story lines. The first group of stories made up a sub-section called, "The Suicide Club". What an awful title! The three stories feature a Bohemian prince and an English gentlemen who together try to catch all the members of a dangerous "club" which take turns murdering each other or being murdered. Obviously recruitment must happen for the continued vivacity of the club!
Other than the grisly nature of the story, the thing that struck me was a feeling like the plot line never seemed finished, or nearing a literary climax. So curious did this make me that I did a reckie on the origins and publication of the book to make sure that I wasn't dreaming all this up.
It turns up that my instincts are right up to snuff. The stories, R. L. Stevenson's first published works, were written as periodicals for a few newspapers. The stories were intentionally written so that anyone could pick one up an read it, but using the same characters for continued readership. It was an interesting read, but a little odd.
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