An Inland Voyage

I am so struck by the ideas expressed here about his approach to travel and his humourous insights into human nature that I want to keep this book always with me. Stevenson seems to embody all of the wonderful traits of the heroes of Treasure Island and Kidnapped as they would be as grown men, including a self-deprecating awareness of his own flaws. The descriptions of nature and the minor incidents of the trip make rural France vivid to the imagination. There is much here worth revisiting again and again. It has had an effect on me beyond all anticipation.

The model for endless subsequent cruising memoirs, but still worth going back to for the freshness and liveliness of RLS's prose. He was a relatively early adopter of the late-Victorian touring canoe craze inspired by MacGregor, and on this trip through Belgian and French rivers he and his travelling companion (quaintly only identified in the text by the name of his boat, the Cigarette) were something of a novelty for the people they encountered, so there's a feeling of exploration even though they are rather close to home. Occasionally he allows himself to be a bit too patronising about working-class French people, but most of the time it's very agreeable to read.

This was the first book published by RLS - he had earlier writings printed in magazine, but this was his first book.
I read this after reading Travels With a Donkey which was his next work to be published. Both are "travel literature" and both relate the story of rough travels in France - a little like an early backpacker experience - where the discomfort and inconvenience is a necessary part of the story to later told.
I found this work to be less polished than Travels with a Donkey, and when I found it was the earlier piece, I was able to retrospectively see the L-plates on the author. He seems to be trying too hard to impress. But by the second half of the book, I found the writing flowed better, contained more interesting insights, show more and was generally more pleasing.
A good read, particularly in relation to observing the development of the author.
Read Nov 2015. show less

Stevenson and a friend travel along the French canals and rivers in canoes for "leisure". Outdoor travel for leisure was unusual for the time and they were often mistaken for traveling salesman, but the novelty of their canoes would occasion entire villages to come out and wave along the river banks. Very well written, Stevenson was a true Romantic. Like many of his works, this one is fairly unique, nothing else he wrote since is quite like it in style or tone. It paints a delightful atmosphere of Europe in a more innocent time with its quirky inn keepers, traveling entertainers and puppeteers, old men who had never left their villages, ramshackle military units parading around with drums and swords, gypsy families who lived on canal show more barges. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3485824.html

Stevenson's first non-fiction book, a voyage by canoe through Belgium and France in 1878 with a Scottish baronet friend. It's interesting to look at the route between Antwerp and (more or less) Paris by water rather than by the more familiar road or rail. There are some nice moments of local colour. But this isn't Three Men in a Boat, and the ending is rather abrupt.

Dnf. Didn’t appreciate all the Librivox narrators.

I concur with nwhyte's review of Oct 7th, 2020.