The Amateur Emigrant

In 1879 Fanny Osbourne telegraphed Robert Louis Stevenson in Edinburgh, begging him to join her in San Francisco. So the penniless young writer boarded an emigrant ship in the Clyde for the long voyage across the Atlantic.

A shrewd and sympathetic observer of his fellow passengers, he describes with clarity and precision the conditions in steerage and then on the trains that took them across the United States. The result is the best account of the great European adventure of the 19th century...