Robert Louis Stevenson
Spine number 01
An Inland Voyage
Stevenson and his friend Walter Simpson paddle through Belgium and northern France, meeting barge families, innkeepers and fellow travellers along the way. His first travel book turns wet clothes, small mishaps and riverside encounters into reflections on freedom and the pleasures of being away.
1878 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 02
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes
A walk through Edinburgh becomes a portrait of a city divided by wealth, landscape and history. Stevenson moves between the Old Town, the New Town and the surrounding hills, combining personal affection with accounts of darker local traditions.
1878 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 03
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
Walking through the Cévennes with a donkey named Modestine, Stevenson discovers how readily a journey can be governed by its least cooperative companion. Camps under the stars and conversations in villages open into thoughts about solitude, companionship and the region’s religious divisions.
1879 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 04
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
Marriage, idleness, walking and the imagination become occasions for conversational essays that question respectable ideas about a useful life. This first essay collection brings together earlier magazine pieces and new material, with a voice that shifts easily from teasing advice to reflection on illness and mortality.
1881 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 05
Familiar Studies of Men and Books
Stevenson approaches writers and historical figures through the difficult relationship between their convictions and their conduct. Essays on Burns, Whitman, Thoreau and others combine literary criticism with character studies; the 1882 collection revisits pieces first published in periodicals.
1882 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 06
New Arabian Nights
Prince Florizel and Colonel Geraldine pursue unexpected adventures through a London of disguises, dangerous clubs and circulating diamonds. Their linked tales share this collection with stories of besieged houses, wandering performers and historical encounters, gathering fiction previously published in magazines.
1882 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 07
Treasure Island
A sea chest at the Admiral Benbow inn draws Jim Hawkins into a voyage in search of buried treasure, aboard a ship whose company includes the persuasive Long John Silver. The adventure makes trust as hazardous as the sea itself. First serialised in Young Folks in 1881–1882, it appeared in revised book form in 1883.
1883 · book · Fiction
Spine number 08
The Silverado Squatters
Stevenson describes an unconventional honeymoon with Fanny and her son Lloyd among the abandoned workings of a Californian silver mine. Visits to local winemakers and encounters with settlers accompany reflections on home and belonging. The first London book edition appeared in December 1883, following magazine publication that year.
1883 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 09
A Child’s Garden of Verses
Beds become boats, gardens become distant countries and familiar rooms expand under the pressure of a child’s imagination. These poems combine invented childhood scenes with personal recollection and addresses to family and friends. Dedicated to Stevenson’s childhood nurse, the collection makes room for loneliness as well as play.
1885 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 10
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter
Three young men seeking adventure become entangled with elaborate personal histories and an erratic conspiracy involving explosives. The interlocking stories turn urban suspense into a comedy of credulity and failed plots. This entry covers the whole book written with Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson.
1885 · book · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 11
Prince Otto
The pleasure-loving ruler of a small German principality discovers that his wife and her minister have taken political affairs into their own hands. Court intrigue and a strained marriage meet in a romance concerned with responsibility, generosity and the uses of power. The novel appeared as a serial and a book in 1885.
1885 · book · Fiction
Spine number 12
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The lawyer Utterson is disturbed by the influence that a violent stranger appears to hold over his respected friend Dr Jekyll. Following a trail of documents, guarded conversations and locked doors, this compact London mystery tests the distance between a public reputation and a private life.
1886 · novella · Fiction
Spine number 13
Kidnapped
Young David Balfour sets out to claim his inheritance and finds himself carried into danger at sea and across the Scottish Highlands. His uneasy friendship with the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart gives this adventure its arguments, humour and divided loyalties. Serial and book editions appeared in 1886.
1886 · book · Fiction
Spine number 14
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables
A treasure seeker visits an island surrounded by dangerous reefs in the title story, while the other tales approach temptation, fear and the possibility of a different life. The collection includes Markheim, Thrawn Janet and Olalla, gathering six previously published stories into the 1887 volume.
1887 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 15
Underwoods
Poems in English and Scots move between friendship, illness, remembered places and sharp comedy about social and religious pretensions. Personal addresses sit beside imagined speakers and scenes, giving the volume its mixed character. The collection includes Requiem, later associated with Stevenson’s grave in Samoa.
1887 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction
Spine number 16
Memories and Portraits
Childhood places, university friendships and family figures emerge through essays about the habits that shape a writer. Stevenson also considers conversation, reading and the making of fiction, bringing personal reminiscence into contact with literary argument. The volume gathers earlier essays alongside pieces first printed here.
1887 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 17
Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin
Stevenson remembers his engineering professor as an inventor, teacher, friend and enthusiast for amateur theatre. Family history and professional achievement are set beside intimate observations of character. The memoir accompanied Jenkin’s collected papers and appeared separately in America in 1887; this entry represents Stevenson’s biography rather than the collected scientific papers.
1887 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 18
The Black Arrow: A Tale of Two Roses
During the Wars of the Roses, Richard Shelton begins to question his guardian’s loyalty when outlaws accuse him of involvement in Richard’s father’s death. Disguises, forest encounters and shifting allegiances propel a historical adventure in which private grievances intersect with civil war. Serialised in 1883, it reached book form in 1888.
1888 · book · Fiction
Spine number 19
The Wrong Box
Two elderly brothers remain in a scheme whose money will go to the last survivor, giving their relatives an uncomfortable interest in their continued existence. A railway accident sets off a farce of mistaken identities, concealment and financial panic. This entry covers the whole novel co-written with Lloyd Osbourne.
1889 · book · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 20
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale
The Durie brothers take opposing sides in the Jacobite rising, but their family’s attempt to protect its fortunes deepens a bitter rivalry. Told largely through the watchful steward Mackellar, the novel carries questions of inheritance and loyalty far beyond the Scottish estate. Its magazine serial began in 1888, before the 1889 book edition.
1889 · book · Fiction
Spine number 21
Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu
Stevenson answers an attack on Father Damien, the priest who worked among people with leprosy on Molokai. Drawing on his own visit and the testimony he gathered, he turns a defence of practical service into an angry challenge to religious complacency.
1890 · pamphlet · Non-fiction
Spine number 22
Ballads
Stories of revenge, prophecy and peril at sea bring Scottish and Pacific traditions into a shared volume of narrative verse. The collection includes Heather Ale and The Song of Rahero; earlier appearances of individual poems precede this first collected edition of 1890.
1890 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 23
Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays
An emigrant train journey across America opens a collection that also returns to childhood, engineering and the work of the imagination. The travel account stands beside essays such as The Lantern-Bearers and A Chapter on Dreams. This entry represents the 1892 collection, whose title essay first appeared in 1883.
1892 · collection · Non-fiction
Spine number 24
The Wrecker
Would-be artist Loudon Dodd joins the enterprising Jim Pinkerton in a business venture involving a stranded ship. An unexpectedly costly auction opens a mystery that draws art, commerce and concealed identities into a Pacific adventure. Written with Lloyd Osbourne, the whole novel is represented here by its first book edition, following a serial begun in 1891.
1892 · book · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 25
A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
Stevenson examines the political conflicts that brought Samoan leaders into confrontation with foreign officials and competing imperial powers. Written from his involvement in island affairs, the account follows the roles of Britain, Germany and the United States while arguing against the damage done by outside interference.
1892 · book · Non-fiction
Spine number 26
Three Plays
A respectable Edinburgh tradesman’s concealed criminal life stands beside dramas of fashionable society and a retired seaman haunted by his past. This volume collects Deacon Brodie, Beau Austin and Admiral Guinea, written with W. E. Henley. The plays had earlier private printings; this entry covers the whole 1892 collection.
1892 · collection · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 27
Island Nights’ Entertainments
A newcomer to a Pacific trading settlement discovers how commerce and manipulation shape local relationships in The Beach of Falesá. The Bottle Imp and The Isle of Voices accompany it with supernatural bargains and unsettling desires. The three stories, first published separately between 1891 and 1893, were collected in 1893.
1893 · collection · Fiction
Spine number 28
Catriona
David Balfour’s adventures continue amid legal manoeuvring in Edinburgh and his growing attachment to Catriona Drummond. The sequel to Kidnapped gives more space to courtship and the difficulty of acting honourably under political pressure. Published in America as David Balfour, it appeared in book form in 1893 after serialisation began in 1892.
1893 · book · Fiction
Spine number 29
The Ebb-Tide: A Trio and Quartette
Three destitute men in Tahiti accept the chance to take charge of a trading vessel, carrying their failures and ambitions out to sea. The voyage brings them into a harsh contest over money, authority and belief. This entry covers the whole work written with Lloyd Osbourne, published as a book in 1894 after serialisation began in 1893.
1894 · novella · Fiction · Collaboration
Spine number 30
The Amateur Emigrant
Travelling to America to join Fanny, Stevenson shares the discomforts of passengers whose hopes of a new life are constrained by poverty. His account observes the practical realities behind romantic ideas of emigration. Prepared for publication in 1880 but withdrawn, it appeared in an edited posthumous edition in 1895; the train journey had already been published separately as Across the Plains.
1895 · book · Non-fiction · Posthumous
Spine number 31
Songs of Travel and Other Verses
Wandering, attachment and separation recur in poems that connect journeys through the world with changes in the inner life. Imagined voices mingle with personal addresses and reflections. The collection first appeared posthumously in the Edinburgh Edition in 1895, before its separate volume of 1896.
1895 · collection · Fiction & non-fiction · Posthumous
Spine number 32
Fables
Brief encounters between travellers, reformers, animals and even characters from Treasure Island unsettle easy assumptions about right conduct. These small stories invite readers to question the lesson as well as the storyteller. First printed posthumously in a magazine in 1895, they appeared as a separate collection in 1896.
1896 · collection · Fiction · Posthumous
Spine number 33
Weir of Hermiston
Archie Weir recoils from the severity of his father, a powerful Scottish judge, and struggles to find a life outside his authority. Family conflict and attachment to the people of the Hermiston estate shape this unfinished novel. Stevenson was working on it when he died; the surviving text was published posthumously in 1896.
1896 · book · Fiction · Unfinished · Posthumous
Spine number 34
In the South Seas
Stevenson records encounters, customs and conversations from his Pacific travels, combining personal observation with questions about belief and social change. Sidney Colvin edited this posthumous volume from material that had appeared in periodicals in 1891. The 1896 collection preserves part of Stevenson’s larger, unrealised project about the Pacific.
1896 · book · Non-fiction · Posthumous
Spine number 35
St Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England
A French prisoner held in Edinburgh Castle becomes caught between escape, family claims and his attachment to a Scottish woman during the Napoleonic Wars. Stevenson left the novel unfinished, and Arthur Quiller-Couch supplied its concluding chapters. This entry represents the completed composite novel, serialised in 1896–1897 and first issued as a book in America in 1897.
1897 · book · Fiction · Posthumous · Collaboration
Stevenson offers several ways in: a sea adventure, a concentrated mystery or the companionable voice of a traveller. Begin with the kind of movement you enjoy, then turn to his Scottish fiction for a different test of trust and loyalty.
Where to begin
Start here
Treasure Island
Jim Hawkins’s perspective gives the adventure immediacy, while the adults around him make courage and trust difficult to judge. Choose this for brisk storytelling, vivid encounters and a journey whose danger keeps changing shape.
Not yet in our collection
For a shorter, darker read
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Read this as an unfolding mystery, attending to what the witnesses and documents choose to reveal. Its compact form makes the guarded speech and oppressive atmosphere particularly effective, even if the central idea is already familiar.
Not yet in our collection
For travel and reflection
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
Choose the walking journey for a more conversational Stevenson, alert to the friction between freedom and everyday inconvenience. Its encounters and pauses suit readers who enjoy landscape, humour and a narrator willing to examine his own reactions.
Not yet in our collection
Read next
Kidnapped
Follow the sea adventure with a journey in which companionship must survive profound differences of temperament and political allegiance. David and Alan’s exchanges give the action warmth and tension; allow the Scots vocabulary to become familiar as you read.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1878
An Inland Voyage
book
Stevenson and his friend Walter Simpson paddle through Belgium and northern France, meeting barge families, innkeepers and fellow travellers along the way. His first travel book turns wet clothes, small mishaps and riverside encounters into reflections on freedom and the pleasures of being away.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1878
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes
book
A walk through Edinburgh becomes a portrait of a city divided by wealth, landscape and history. Stevenson moves between the Old Town, the New Town and the surrounding hills, combining personal affection with accounts of darker local traditions.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1879
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
book
Walking through the Cévennes with a donkey named Modestine, Stevenson discovers how readily a journey can be governed by its least cooperative companion. Camps under the stars and conversations in villages open into thoughts about solitude, companionship and the region’s religious divisions.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1881
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers
collection
Marriage, idleness, walking and the imagination become occasions for conversational essays that question respectable ideas about a useful life. This first essay collection brings together earlier magazine pieces and new material, with a voice that shifts easily from teasing advice to reflection on illness and mortality.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1882
Familiar Studies of Men and Books
collection
Stevenson approaches writers and historical figures through the difficult relationship between their convictions and their conduct. Essays on Burns, Whitman, Thoreau and others combine literary criticism with character studies; the 1882 collection revisits pieces first published in periodicals.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1882
New Arabian Nights
collection
Prince Florizel and Colonel Geraldine pursue unexpected adventures through a London of disguises, dangerous clubs and circulating diamonds. Their linked tales share this collection with stories of besieged houses, wandering performers and historical encounters, gathering fiction previously published in magazines.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1883
The Silverado Squatters
book
Stevenson describes an unconventional honeymoon with Fanny and her son Lloyd among the abandoned workings of a Californian silver mine. Visits to local winemakers and encounters with settlers accompany reflections on home and belonging. The first London book edition appeared in December 1883, following magazine publication that year.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1883
Treasure Island
book
A sea chest at the Admiral Benbow inn draws Jim Hawkins into a voyage in search of buried treasure, aboard a ship whose company includes the persuasive Long John Silver. The adventure makes trust as hazardous as the sea itself. First serialised in Young Folks in 1881–1882, it appeared in revised book form in 1883.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1885
A Child’s Garden of Verses
collection
Beds become boats, gardens become distant countries and familiar rooms expand under the pressure of a child’s imagination. These poems combine invented childhood scenes with personal recollection and addresses to family and friends. Dedicated to Stevenson’s childhood nurse, the collection makes room for loneliness as well as play.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1885
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter
book · Collaboration
Three young men seeking adventure become entangled with elaborate personal histories and an erratic conspiracy involving explosives. The interlocking stories turn urban suspense into a comedy of credulity and failed plots. This entry covers the whole book written with Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1885
Prince Otto
book
The pleasure-loving ruler of a small German principality discovers that his wife and her minister have taken political affairs into their own hands. Court intrigue and a strained marriage meet in a romance concerned with responsibility, generosity and the uses of power. The novel appeared as a serial and a book in 1885.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1886
Kidnapped
book
Young David Balfour sets out to claim his inheritance and finds himself carried into danger at sea and across the Scottish Highlands. His uneasy friendship with the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart gives this adventure its arguments, humour and divided loyalties. Serial and book editions appeared in 1886.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1886
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
novella
The lawyer Utterson is disturbed by the influence that a violent stranger appears to hold over his respected friend Dr Jekyll. Following a trail of documents, guarded conversations and locked doors, this compact London mystery tests the distance between a public reputation and a private life.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1887
Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin
book
Stevenson remembers his engineering professor as an inventor, teacher, friend and enthusiast for amateur theatre. Family history and professional achievement are set beside intimate observations of character. The memoir accompanied Jenkin’s collected papers and appeared separately in America in 1887; this entry represents Stevenson’s biography rather than the collected scientific papers.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1887
Memories and Portraits
collection
Childhood places, university friendships and family figures emerge through essays about the habits that shape a writer. Stevenson also considers conversation, reading and the making of fiction, bringing personal reminiscence into contact with literary argument. The volume gathers earlier essays alongside pieces first printed here.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1887
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables
collection
A treasure seeker visits an island surrounded by dangerous reefs in the title story, while the other tales approach temptation, fear and the possibility of a different life. The collection includes Markheim, Thrawn Janet and Olalla, gathering six previously published stories into the 1887 volume.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1887
Underwoods
collection
Poems in English and Scots move between friendship, illness, remembered places and sharp comedy about social and religious pretensions. Personal addresses sit beside imagined speakers and scenes, giving the volume its mixed character. The collection includes Requiem, later associated with Stevenson’s grave in Samoa.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1888
The Black Arrow: A Tale of Two Roses
book
During the Wars of the Roses, Richard Shelton begins to question his guardian’s loyalty when outlaws accuse him of involvement in Richard’s father’s death. Disguises, forest encounters and shifting allegiances propel a historical adventure in which private grievances intersect with civil war. Serialised in 1883, it reached book form in 1888.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1889
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale
book
The Durie brothers take opposing sides in the Jacobite rising, but their family’s attempt to protect its fortunes deepens a bitter rivalry. Told largely through the watchful steward Mackellar, the novel carries questions of inheritance and loyalty far beyond the Scottish estate. Its magazine serial began in 1888, before the 1889 book edition.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1889
The Wrong Box
book · Collaboration
Two elderly brothers remain in a scheme whose money will go to the last survivor, giving their relatives an uncomfortable interest in their continued existence. A railway accident sets off a farce of mistaken identities, concealment and financial panic. This entry covers the whole novel co-written with Lloyd Osbourne.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
Ballads
collection
Stories of revenge, prophecy and peril at sea bring Scottish and Pacific traditions into a shared volume of narrative verse. The collection includes Heather Ale and The Song of Rahero; earlier appearances of individual poems precede this first collected edition of 1890.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1890
Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr Hyde of Honolulu
pamphlet
Stevenson answers an attack on Father Damien, the priest who worked among people with leprosy on Molokai. Drawing on his own visit and the testimony he gathered, he turns a defence of practical service into an angry challenge to religious complacency.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
book
Stevenson examines the political conflicts that brought Samoan leaders into confrontation with foreign officials and competing imperial powers. Written from his involvement in island affairs, the account follows the roles of Britain, Germany and the United States while arguing against the damage done by outside interference.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays
collection
An emigrant train journey across America opens a collection that also returns to childhood, engineering and the work of the imagination. The travel account stands beside essays such as The Lantern-Bearers and A Chapter on Dreams. This entry represents the 1892 collection, whose title essay first appeared in 1883.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
The Wrecker
book · Collaboration
Would-be artist Loudon Dodd joins the enterprising Jim Pinkerton in a business venture involving a stranded ship. An unexpectedly costly auction opens a mystery that draws art, commerce and concealed identities into a Pacific adventure. Written with Lloyd Osbourne, the whole novel is represented here by its first book edition, following a serial begun in 1891.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1892
Three Plays
collection · Collaboration
A respectable Edinburgh tradesman’s concealed criminal life stands beside dramas of fashionable society and a retired seaman haunted by his past. This volume collects Deacon Brodie, Beau Austin and Admiral Guinea, written with W. E. Henley. The plays had earlier private printings; this entry covers the whole 1892 collection.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1893
Catriona
book
David Balfour’s adventures continue amid legal manoeuvring in Edinburgh and his growing attachment to Catriona Drummond. The sequel to Kidnapped gives more space to courtship and the difficulty of acting honourably under political pressure. Published in America as David Balfour, it appeared in book form in 1893 after serialisation began in 1892.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1893
Island Nights’ Entertainments
collection
A newcomer to a Pacific trading settlement discovers how commerce and manipulation shape local relationships in The Beach of Falesá. The Bottle Imp and The Isle of Voices accompany it with supernatural bargains and unsettling desires. The three stories, first published separately between 1891 and 1893, were collected in 1893.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1894
The Ebb-Tide: A Trio and Quartette
novella · Collaboration
Three destitute men in Tahiti accept the chance to take charge of a trading vessel, carrying their failures and ambitions out to sea. The voyage brings them into a harsh contest over money, authority and belief. This entry covers the whole work written with Lloyd Osbourne, published as a book in 1894 after serialisation began in 1893.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1895
Songs of Travel and Other Verses
collection · Posthumous
Wandering, attachment and separation recur in poems that connect journeys through the world with changes in the inner life. Imagined voices mingle with personal addresses and reflections. The collection first appeared posthumously in the Edinburgh Edition in 1895, before its separate volume of 1896.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1895
The Amateur Emigrant
book · Posthumous
Travelling to America to join Fanny, Stevenson shares the discomforts of passengers whose hopes of a new life are constrained by poverty. His account observes the practical realities behind romantic ideas of emigration. Prepared for publication in 1880 but withdrawn, it appeared in an edited posthumous edition in 1895; the train journey had already been published separately as Across the Plains.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1896
Fables
collection · Posthumous
Brief encounters between travellers, reformers, animals and even characters from Treasure Island unsettle easy assumptions about right conduct. These small stories invite readers to question the lesson as well as the storyteller. First printed posthumously in a magazine in 1895, they appeared as a separate collection in 1896.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1896
In the South Seas
book · Posthumous
Stevenson records encounters, customs and conversations from his Pacific travels, combining personal observation with questions about belief and social change. Sidney Colvin edited this posthumous volume from material that had appeared in periodicals in 1891. The 1896 collection preserves part of Stevenson’s larger, unrealised project about the Pacific.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1896
Weir of Hermiston
book · Unfinished · Posthumous
Archie Weir recoils from the severity of his father, a powerful Scottish judge, and struggles to find a life outside his authority. Family conflict and attachment to the people of the Hermiston estate shape this unfinished novel. Stevenson was working on it when he died; the surviving text was published posthumously in 1896.
Not yet in our collection
Published 1897
St Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England
book · Posthumous · Collaboration
A French prisoner held in Edinburgh Castle becomes caught between escape, family claims and his attachment to a Scottish woman during the Napoleonic Wars. Stevenson left the novel unfinished, and Arthur Quiller-Couch supplied its concluding chapters. This entry represents the completed composite novel, serialised in 1896–1897 and first issued as a book in America in 1897.
Not yet in our collection
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer whose stories bring adventure into contact with questions of loyalty, conscience and divided identity. Treasure Island (1883) follows a boy into the uncertain company of pirates, while Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) finds menace behind the doors of respectable London. His Scottish fiction, including Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889), sets personal loyalties against political conflict and family rivalry.
Born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850 into a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson studied engineering and then law before making writing his career. Journeys through France and America supplied material for travel books in which encounters and mishaps lead into reflection. His essays cultivate an intimate, questioning voice, while A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) explores childhood imagination alongside memories of solitude and illness.
After travelling in the Pacific, Stevenson settled with his family at Vailima in Samoa in 1890. His later work includes stories of island trade and colonial power, as well as A Footnote to History (1892), an account of political conflict in Samoa. He died there on 3 December 1894, leaving Weir of Hermiston and St Ives unfinished; both appeared after his death, the latter with a continuation by Arthur Quiller-Couch.