travels with my donkey robert louis stevenson

Stevenson meets peasant men, women, children, many of whom have never left their village or valley and whose dialect is, in places, an entirely different language to the French spoken in Paris. This book also, is a rare portrayal of the marginalised in a society. Yet, this portrayal illustrates the extent to which France as a nation, even after the French Revolution, was hugely varied due to its size and diversity of natural landscape. The Cevennes, as portrayed by Stevenson seems almost imaginary in its backwardness. His fame was such that a price was put on his head.

One such tale is of a wolf, which, it is claimed, ate “women, children and ‘shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty’”. His tale is riddled with folk stories recounted to him by the farmers and peasants he meets. He encounters the people of the region, so different to those near Paris or those in urban France. Stevenson travels an area mostly inaccessible to the outside world. Yet, it is also an unusual and valuable historical source. This book, short in length and filled with Stevenson’s dry humour is an easy and enjoyable read. It is a commentary on his journey, the people of that region, unusual in France for their Huguenot, French Protestant heritage, and his trials with his mode of transport, Modestine, a donkey. In brief, the book is a description of Stevenson’s travels through the Cevennes, an area in central France. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes may, at first, seem an odd choice of book for a history undergraduate.

Travels with my donkey robert louis stevenson