‘The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public – a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.’

One of Robert Louis Stevenson’s bestselling works of his time, ‘The Lantern Bearers’ is a charming essay on the joys underlying realist literature.

Sometimes mistakenly taken as a fictional narrative, the essay begins with three boys – of which Stevenson is one – who reside in a seaside town during the summer. Stevenson describes the various splendours of existence in the town, such as fishing, tide pools and the open sea air. The three boys begin a nighttime ritual in which they attach lanterns to their belts, hidden by their overcoats, meandering in the dark and engaging in discussions only for their own ears – a simple, but profound source of pleasure. It becomes an allegory for the importance of romance in realism; why writers ought to seek where joy lies in the everyday. This audiobook edition is brilliantly read by Robin Laing.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer. Best known for his novels Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, his worked spanned from romance and adventure writing to gothic dark realism. He remains one of the most translated authors in the world.