By either account, it is a blessing that this novel remains unfinished. The two people who shared Stevenson’s confidences, reveal endings that could have seriously degraded his effort. The “Weir of Hermiston” carries us to the point where whatever “inevitable mechanics” were about to bring it into c

Questo romanzo, rimasto incompiuto, avrebbe potuto rappresentare una svolta nell'opera di Stevenson. Nel remoto arcipelago delle Samoa, dove si era stabilito alla disperata ricerca di un clima che lo aiutasse a controllare la sua fragilissima salute, aveva ormai adattato la sua arte a un'altra cultu

The first part of the evening was to assess the unfinished book (or “fragment”, though clocking in at 122 pages), and the second part was to speculate about how the rest of the novel might have gone.

Most were keen - very keen - on the book. “Superb!”. “Really liked it”. “Characters very strong, plot

What a beautiful, poignant, rich fragment of a novel! I can see why people often talk about Weir of Hermiston as Stevenson’s masterpiece, even though it is “badly” unfinished (no more than a quarter of the whole, to judge from Stevenson’s friend Sidney Colvin’s informed reconstruction of the intende