Not only is it one of the earliest portrayals of traveling in the out of doors for pleasure as a vacation, it also describes the commissioning of one of the first sleeping bags of Stevenson's own design and idea, it was made by local villagers with sewn together sheep skins (wool-side in), forming what he called a 'sleeping sack'. In the genre of Outdoor literature, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes is considered an early pioneering classic. The 12-day solo hiking trip through the Cevennes mountains in the south of France would be, up to that point in his life, the greatest adventure he had ever undertaken, an opportunity to leave the cloistered life of school and the sick-bed for the wide open out of doors. Stevenson enjoyed traveling, adventure, and the outdoors, a trait inheritance from his sea-faring family, but he had also been sickly much of his life with lung problems. Late that summer she returned home to California and Stevenson was unsure of what to do next needing money to become financially independent from his parents, and chase after the woman he loved, he headed into the hills of southern France to gain travel experience, reflect on this cross-roads in life, escape from the pain of separation from Fanny, and write a book about it. Stevenson had recently met and fell in love with an American woman in Paris, 10 years his elder, named Fanny Osbourne, although she was still technically married to a husband in San Francisco. Stevenson's unconventional bohemian lifestyle matched his daringly long hair and eccentric appearance, much to the chagrin and worry of his conservative parents in Scotland who were still supporting him financially.

His future career as a writer was far from assured, having only published one travel book, An Inland Voyage, and a few essays. Robert Louis Stevenson was 28 years old in the summer of 1878, recently out of law school, living in France as a struggling and unestablished author, he had yet to write the books that would make him famous - Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

37908 The Annotated 'Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes' - Background Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879

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