Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Scotland and died in Samoa at the end of a life of travels, during which he produced novels, short stories, literary essays, poetry, drama, and travel writing. Trained in law at Edinburgh University, Stevenson was under pressure to conform to the Edinburgh bourgeois society in which his family had made its name as lighthouse engineers; he preferred a more bohemian existence as a writer. Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, and The Master of Ballantrae. His heirs sold his papers during World War I, and many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918. The late 20th century brought a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight. The Black Arrow is the story of a young man’s maturation during the mid-fifteenth century when England was torn by thirty years of civil war, known as the Wars of the Roses. One afternoon in the late springtime, the Moat House bell begins to ring. A messenger arrived with a message from Sir Daniel Brackley for Sir Oliver Oates, his clerk. When the peasants gather at the summons of the bell, they are told that as many armed men as can be spared from the defence of Moat House are to join Sir Daniel at Kettley, where a battle is to be fought between the armies of Lancaster and York… You can listen online to free English audiobook “The Black Arrow” by Robert Louis Stevenson on our website.
