Although Robert Louis Stevenson died in Samoa before completing his final novel, Weir of Hermiston, the fragment did appear posthumously. Because he had also written out plans for the balance of the novel, the full story is known. Even in… Read More ›
First published as a serial in the magazine Young Folks between October 1881 and January 1882, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island would be labeled a masterpiece of storytelling by notables including author Henry James. Stevenson began the story in 1881… Read More ›
Of Anthony Hope’s many short stories and various novels, The Prisoner of Zenda remains his best known and enjoyed, praised by contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson, followed by its less successful sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898). The novel offers… Read More ›
Robert Louis Stevenson found himself attracted to the subject matter of his novel The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale due to his interest in the years following Jacobite Scotland’s 1745 rebellion. He also drew inspiration from Captain Marryat, commenting,… Read More ›
Robert Louis Stevenson continued in the vein of writing adventure stories for boys when he published Kidnapped, first as a serial in a boy’s magazine. However, adults had taken notice of his accomplished style in earlier novels, such as Treasure… Read More ›
Bram Stoker followed the lead set by Robert Louis Stevenson in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) to write horror fiction. Such stories were enjoying a renewed prestige among the French, and Stevenson proved that modern… Read More ›
The term Gothicism in its literary meaning derives not from the Goths, an ancient Germanic tribe, but from the sense of Gothic as medieval. This literary movement may be seen as a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and… Read More ›
“The Beach of Falesá” is a story of colonialism in the South Seas that shocked many of Robert Louis Stevenson’s admirers when it was first published in the Illustrated London News (1892). It is related in the first person by… Read More ›
Robert Louis Stevenson (13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) has long been relegated to either the nursery or the juvenile section in most libraries, and his mixture of romance, horror, and allegory seems jejune. In times narrative and well-ordered… Read More ›
By the end of the nineteenth century, writers interested in exploring supernatural themes had abandoned the mode of gothic fiction pioneered by eighteenth century English novelist Horace Walpole. Walpole and his imitators had exploited such props as medieval ruins and… Read More ›
The play between mythological and modern significance, between mystical and scientific visions of horror and unity, sexuality and sacred violence, is focused in the figure of the vampire. In Mary Braddon’s ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896) the vampire theme signals the… Read More ›
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