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Unsigned handwritten manuscript by Robert Louis Stevenson, headed "The Plains of Nebraska," one page, 8 x 12.5, no date. Stevenson drafts a section of the manuscript for his 1892 travel memoir Across the Plains, beginning: "It had thundered on the Friday night, but the sun rose on Saturday without a cloud. We were at sea—there is no other adequate expression—on the plains of Nebraska. I made my observatory on the top of a fruit waggon, and sat by the hour upon that perch to spy about me, and to spy in vain, for something new. It was a world almost without a feature: an empty sky, an empty earth; front and back, the line of railway stretched from horizon to horizon, like a cue across a billiard board; on either hand, the green plain ran till it touched the skirts of heaven." Stevenson makes numerous corrections and deletions to the text, which is penned entirely in his distinctive, diminutive hand.
The manuscript page is folded in fourths and tipped into a first edition of the book Across the Plains (between pages 40 and 41), published in London by Chatto & Windus in 1892. Affixed to the front pastedown is an ALS by his friend and literary mentor Sidney Colvin, on British Museum letterhead, in full: "The Mss. inserted at pp. [31 and] 40 are portions of the original autograph by R.L.S. in my possession." Autographic condition: fine, with short splits to the central vertical fold. Book condition: G-/None, with cracked and loose hinges, spine cloth split and peeling, rubbing to boards, bumped corners, and the bookplate of Margot Tennant affixed to the front pastedown.
Robert Louis Stevenson composed Across the Plains after his 1879–1880 journey from New York to California, transforming the rigors and monotony of overland travel into vivid literary observation. Published in 1892, the memoir captures his keen impressions of the American West at a moment of rapid change, blending travel narrative with social commentary and lyrical landscape writing. The Nebraska crossing—one of the most memorable passages in the book—reveals Stevenson’s ability to find drama in apparent emptiness, rendering the vast prairie in spare, poetic imagery. Manuscript material from Across the Plains is notably scarce, and this working draft page offers a rare glimpse into his creative process during a formative period in his transatlantic career.
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