Should books have morality? The "Treasure Island" writer answers

Introduction. Robert L Stevenson is one of the most translated authors ever. You know his classics: Treasure Island & Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In his book Essays in the Art of Writing (1905), he takes on a big question: Should literature have a “morality”? 👇

When literature ignores morality and only pursues quarterly book sales, it becomes “slovenly, base, untrue, and empty.” The writer must lean into his innate desire to communicate a “theory of life” that he believes is “useful” for the reader.

How to write a book: One must write a book with a “noble design” or at minimum with an “ardor of a first love.” To write for “purely mercenary” reasons is to degrade our talents and the work we produce.

Art is our attempt to make life measurable, graspable, and understandable. Stevenson writes that when we create, we half-shut our "eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality." Reality is "infinite, illogical, abrupt" - art is "contained, rational, flowing."

How to pick a career: "Like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor & brave career in which we can do the most & best." Following your deep interests leads to good things: “Nature, faithfully followed, proves herself a careful mother.”

2 paths for writers: “We may seek merely to please; we may seek, having no higher gift, merely to gratify the idle 9 days’ curiosity of our contemporaries; or we may essay, however feebly, to instruct.” Instructing is harder; it opens us up to judgment by people & time itself.

The strength or weakness from which the writer works is the only thing he can really offer to the readers. Stevenson: "The health or disease of the writer’s mind forms not only the leading feature of his work, but is, at bottom, the only thing he can communicate to others."

When you write with intensity, even a boring subject matter is elevated: "When books are conceived under a great stress, nine times heated and electrified by effort, even if the main design is trivial or base, some truth and beauty cannot fail to be expressed."

What to do before you enter a controversy: "If you propose to enter on the field of controversy, you should first have thought upon the question under all conditions, in health as well as in sickness, in sorrow as well as in joy."

The most amusing of tales must have some instruction - and the most instructive of texts must at least be a little amusing: "So far from its being difficult to instruct while you amuse, it is difficult to do the one thoroughly without the other."