PREFACE

“No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson,” said G. K. Chesterton once. “He seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins.”

Over the course of his short forty-four years of life, Robert Louis Stevenson produced some of the most beloved and important works of English fiction during the late nineteenth century—works that, in rare form, appealed to the masses, from curious children to intelligent young adults and elderly readers (even if in slow decline!). I started reading Stevenson in the 1940s when I was only ten or eleven years old. I recall being enthralled by the fantastical stories of Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and his lesser-known short stories that were collected in the companion novellas The Suicide Club—itself a great title—and The Rajah’s Diamond.

The world now knows that Stevenson, in addition to being a superb wordsmith, was an incurable romantic, as evidenced by his pursuit of his lover Fanny Stevens from Europe to San Francisco, California—a journey that ultimately broke his health. Perhaps it was this sense of abandon that reflected in his ability to spin masterful tales of adventure. In addition to his intrepid stories, Stevenson’s vivid imagination also allowed him to write about an extraordinary range of topics, including the horror and science fiction gothic novella, “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which has captivated the world and resulted in numerous stage, film, TV, and book adaptations and spin-offs, including the unofficial sequel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek: The Strange Case Continues by Anthony O’Neill, published in 2018 by Skyhorse Publishing.

Today in 2018, Stevenson’s celebrity still shines bright in contemporary popular mythology. In continuation of his enduring legacy, many of his novels were made into masterful films, such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (including at least eight US productions, the most famous of which being a 1941 adaptation that starred Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner), and many others. Most of his work, to this day, is very much alive and still in print, living in the minds of us all.

This authoritative volume, The Greatest Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, will provide great entertainment for readers who want to be entertained. I hope you enjoy it.

HERMAN GRAF