Books by Leo Damrosch
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson
by Leo Damrosch
Storyteller by Leo Damrosch, a literature professor at Harvard, tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist, from his birth in Edinburgh to his death in Samoa at the age of just 44, after a life plagued by ill health. It also makes the case for Stevenson as a serious writer, not just to be dismissed as a children's author.
“This is a one-volume biography by Leo Damrosch. It’s quite racily-written, very readable. There are other biographies of Rousseau, some of them very scholarly…Rousseau was a biographer of himself, an autobiographer. The most famous of his autobiographical writings is the Confessions, but there’s also Reveries of a Solitary Walker, and the famous Dialogues, where you have a very paranoid Rousseau in conversation with another character, ‘the Frenchman,’ concerning the faults of an alter ego, Jean-Jacques. So Rousseau did tell the story of his own life, but Damrosch tells it very well in English.” Read more...
The best books on Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Chris Bertram, Philosopher
Interviews where books by Leo Damrosch were recommended
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1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius
by Leo Damrosch -
2
Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age
by Grace Roosevelt -
3
Rousseau: An Introduction to His Psychological, Social and Political Theory
by N J H Dent -
4
Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies
by Robert Wokler -
5
Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality
by Frederick Neuhouser
The best books on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recommended by Chris Bertram
The best books on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, recommended by Chris Bertram
The 18th century composer, writer and philosopher spent his latter years “alone upon the earth, having no brother, or neighbour, or friend, or society but myself”. But he only had himself to blame, says philosophy professor and Rousseau scholar Chris Bertram. Here, he chooses the best five books on this complex man’s life and work.
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1
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
by Stephen Greenblatt -
2
The Colonialist: The Vision of Cecil Rhodes
by William Kelleher Storey -
3
Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome
by Jane Draycott -
4
The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany and the Spy Who Betrayed Them
by Jonathan Freedland -
5
Baldwin: A Love Story
by Nicholas Boggs -
6
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen
by Lance Richardson
New Biographies
New Biographies
Among the new biographies coming out in 2025, the lives of literary figures have been particularly prominent, including new books about Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish adventure writer, and Shakespeare’s rival Christopher Marlowe, who was stabbed to death aged 29. Also popular are reconstructions of lives from the distant past that we know little about, including the first King of England and Fulvia, the first wife of Mark Antony.
