In honor of Robert Louis Stevenson's November 13th birthday, we have pirates and adventure on the brain!

Index
1. Announcements
2 .Exhibition Connection: Clare Leighton's Surprising Tie to RLS
3. Featured Upcoming Programs: Black Friday/Saturday Book Sale 
4. Recommended Reading: A Novel Inspired by RLS and a Lauded Biography
5. Recommended Reading: How I Became a Pirate by Miranda Long
6. Special Collections: Treasure Island Was Written Under Trying Circumstances
7. Community Corner: An Exciting Exhibition Comes to Mystic, CT 
8. Shop for Books Online

Did you know - we're now open on Thursday nights until 8 p.m.!

Forthcoming talks with the Library Speakers Consortium feature luminaries like Geraldine Brooks (12/6) and Fredrik Backman (12/10). Click here to register for upcoming events or view recent recordings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Library Hours
Monday - Friday: 10am - 6pm
NEW! Thursday: Open until 8 p.m.
Saturday: 10am - 4pm
Sunday: closed

You're invited to participate in our anonymous 5-minute survey! You'll directly help us plan educational programs, improve library services, serve as stewards of the Special Collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archives, and maintain our historic building for generations to come. 

EXHIBITION CONNECTION

Our current exhibition, The Lure of the Garden: The Enduring Desire to Work and Shape the Land, features a childhood journal as well as images from Clare Leighton, the British/American artist known for her block prints and illustrations. As it turns out, Clare Leighton and Robert Louis Stevenson shared a common thread in Clare's father: Robert Leighton. Like Stevenson, Robert Leighton was a Scottish writer of adventure tales for boys. He moved to London in 1879, when he was twenty-one, and worked as an assistant editor for Young Folks magazine, a popular weekly newspaper for boys and girls. Young Folks accepted Treasure Island and serialized it in 1881 and 1882, while Leighton was first assistant editor. Young Folks also serialized Stevenson's The Black Arrow in 1883 and Kidnapped in 1886. Leighton was editor of Young Folks in 1884-1885.

However, the relationship was at best tangential, and there is no mention of Leighton in Stevenson's letters. One overlap seems to have yielded unfortunate consequences: according to Roger Swearingen, an authority on Robert Louis Stevenson, in 1900, after Stevenson's death, Leighton made several mistaken assertions about the publication of Treasure Island, including the idea that Stevenson was told to model his book on an 1873 pirate tale also published in Young Folks, Charles Pearce's Billy Bo'sun. According to Swearingen, although Stevenson was sent a sample copy of Young Folks, it was not a copy containing this earlier work. Nor did Stevenson ever mention it as a source. Hence the connection ends as far as we know!

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