“[Stevenson’s] essays are tremendously bold in their biographical and interpretive outlines,” said the Times Literary Supplement. “[They attest to his] human curiosity, his intimate, affectionate embroilment with behavior and character, his wonderful phrase-making and inventiveness of language.” As a poet Stevenson enjoyed his greatest success with A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), an extraordinarily evocative picture of the joys and heartaches of childhood that appealed to both imaginative children and nostalgic adults. His other volumes of poetry include Underwoods (1887), Ballads (1890), and Songs of Travel (1896).

In 1888 Stevenson set sail from San Francisco for the South Pacific, where he spent the last six years of his life. In the South Seas (1896), a posthumously issued travelogue, vividly recounts his journey there. During this period he collaborated with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, on The Wrong Box (1889), a black comedy involving a mismanaged trust fund and a recalcitrant corpse; The Wrecker (1892), a story of modern crime and adventure on the Pacific; and The Ebb-Tide (1894), a dark tale probing the nature of evil that anticipates the fiction of Joseph Conrad. In addition he published Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893), a collection of short stories that included “The Bottle Imp” (1891) and “The Isle of Voices” (1893), two tales based on Polynesian superstitions, along with “The Beach of Falesá” (1892), a masterful meditation on the growing gulf between native Polynesians and the white imperialists who had invaded their world. He also completed two works of nonfiction: Father Damien (1890), a famous defense of the Belgian priest who devoted his life to the care of lepers, and A Footnote to History (1892), a piercing examination of political turmoil in Samoa. Robert Louis Stevenson died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his estate in Vailima, Samoa, on 3 December 1894. The next day Samoan chieftains honored Stevenson, whom they hailed as Tusitala, or “Teller of Tales,” with burial in a tomb atop Mount Vaea. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, an eight-volume compilation of his correspondence, was issued in 1994 to mark the centenary of his death.

“Stevenson can claim to have mastered the whole gamut of fiction,” judged Arthur Conan Doyle. “No man has a more marked individuality, and yet no man effaces himself more completely when he sets himself to tell a tale.” And John Galsworthy stated, “As a teller of a tale Stevenson is the equal of Dumas and Dickens.… Hehad but one main theme, that essential theme of romance, the struggle between the good and the bad, of hero against villain.… Stevenson was so vivid and attractive as a person, so picturesque in his travels and his ways of life, so copious and entrancing in his essays and his letters, and so pleasing as a poet, that his general self overshadows him as a novelist. But compare with his novels all the romantic novels written since … and you will see how high he stands. Next to Dumas, he is the best of all the romantic novelists [and] of British nineteenth century writers, he will live longer than any except Dickens.” His biographer, David Daiches, concluded that “Stevenson produced some of the most memorable fiction in our language.… He transformed the Victorian boys’ adventure into a classic of its kind.”

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

INTRODUCTION by Barry Menikoff

THE COMPLETE STORIES OF
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

THE SUICIDE CLUB

Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts

Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk

The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs

THE RAJAH’S DIAMOND

Story of the Bandbox

Story of the Young Man in Holy Orders

Story of the House with the Green Blinds

The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective

THE PAVILION ON THE LINKS

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT

THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT’S DOOR

PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR

STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

THE MERRY MEN AND OTHER TALES AND FABLES

THE MERRY MEN

WILL O’ THE MILL

MARKHEIM

THRAWN JANET

OLALLA

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD

ISLAND NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS

THE BEACH OF FALESÁ

THE BOTTLE IMP

THE ISLE OF VOICES

UNCOLLECTED STORIES

AN OLD SONG

THE STORY OF A LIE

THE BODY-SNATCHER

THE MISADVENTURES OF JOHN NICHOLSON

NOTES

SCOTS GLOSSARY

STEVENSON IN THE OED

INTRODUCTION

Barry Menikoff

On 14 October 1877 the New York Times published a short story, “A Lodging for the Night,” with no signature other than the name of the English magazine that had printed it a month earlier. The editor clearly had an eye for good copy, for three more stories were lifted from their English magazines over the next few years. Thus the New York Times has the distinction of being the first publisher of Stevenson’s fiction in America. Some years later, just after Stevenson died, a Times reviewer recalled that first experience, raining plaudits on the newspaper for its perspicacity and shrewdness of judgment. Of course that was many years ago, when the retrospectives and encomiums were still fresh, and when every literate person shared a common conviction that Robert Louis Stevenson, whom the gods loved, was already a classic of English literature. Stevenson today is quite possibly the most anomalous figure in literary and cultural studies. In truth, Stevenson’s versatility and productivity astonish anyone who happens upon the volumes of essays, travels, novels, plays, poetry, criticism, and correspondence that constitute one of the most extraordinary bodies of work in nineteenth-century English letters. But the variety and complexity of that work were nothing more than a mirror of the man. Stevenson was intellectual, bohemian, and consummately romantic. It is unreasonable to think he would not transmute the intensity of that personality into his work. Walter de la Mare said it best: “We actually see him in every line he ever wrote—that long face, those dark dwelling eyes, that straight hair, those tapering fingers.”

Virtually all of Stevenson’s contemporaries recognized that his claim on immortality—fame was not even the question—was made in his fiction, and particularly in the short story, a genre he defined both in theory and in practice. From George Saintsbury and Henry Seidel Canby at the turn of the century to V. S. Pritchett and Sean O’Faoláin more recently, Stevenson was synonymous with this new form. In 1914 Frank Swinnerton called him “among the best English writers of short stories.” Five years later TLS reassessed the body of his work: “In the short story his art found a province narrow enough to dominate.” Edith Wharton in 1925 considered him one of a modern English triumvirate, along with Henry James and Joseph Conrad. And John Buchan, at the end of the decade, affirmed all these judgments: “Stevenson was one of the best story-tellers that ever lived.