In recent years there has been a wave of enthusiasm for the author of these works, with the publication of major biographies and collections of his letters.

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pictorial Text explores the genesis, production and the critical appreciation of the illustrations to the fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson is one of the most copied and interpreted authors of the late nineteenth century, especially his novels Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. These interpretations began with the illustration of his texts in their early editions, often with Stevenson’s express consent, and this book traces Stevenson’s understanding and critical responses to the artists employed to illustrate his texts. In doing so, it attempts to position Stevenson as an important thinker and writer on the subject of illustrated literature, and on the marriage of literature and visual arts, at a moment preceding the dawn of cinema, and the rejection of such popular tropes by modernist writers of the early twentieth century.

Millions of readers throughout the world continue to enjoy Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses, and other books by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). A celebrated author in many different fields of literature, Stevenson is also recognized as a highly engaging and prolific correspondent: he penned over 2,800 letters, which are contained in eight critically acclaimed volumes published by Yale University Press. In this book, 317 of Stevenson's most interesting and revealing letters represent each stage of his mature life. With a linking narrative and full annotation, Ernest Mehew sets the letters in the context of Stevenson's remarkable life. Beginning with the days of his troubled youth in Edinburgh, Stevenson's letters go on to tell of his love for Frances Sitwell, a beautiful, older married woman; a reckless journey to California in pursuit of Fanny Osbourne, the woman who became his wife; their worldwide but vain search for a healthy place to live; and a period of adventure in the South Seas, where Stevenson wrote some of his best work and became passionately involved in Samoan life. The letters show the author's zest for living despite daunting illnesses, his struggles with his own writing, his literary tastes, and his affection for his friends. Stevenson writes in many moods, ranging from playful and witty to deeply serious. Better than any biography ever could, these letters in Stevenson's own words tell the real story of his life.

In his travel narrative Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), Robert Louis Stevenson declares, "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. " Taking up the concepts of time, place, and memory, the contributors to this collection explore in what ways the dynamic view of life suggested by this quotation permeates Stevenson's work. The essays adopt a wide variety of critical approaches, including post-colonial theory, post-structuralism, new historicism, art history, and philosophy, making use of the vast array of literary materials that Stevenson left across a global journey that began in Scotland in 1850 and ended in Samoa in 1894. These range from travel journals, letters, and classic literary staples such as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, to rarely read masterpieces such as The Master of Ballantrae or The Ebb-Tide. While much recent scholarship on Stevenson foregrounds geography, the present volume also examines the theme of movement across memory, time, and generic boundaries. Taken together, the essays offer a view of Stevenson that demonstrates how the protean nature of his literary output reflects the radical developments in science, technology, and culture that characterized the age in which he lived.

Critical interest in Robert Louis Stevenson has never been greater. New editions of the author's works--from the poems to the travel writing, from the Scottish novels to the South Seas tales--are appearing. During the year 2000, the sesquicentennial of RLS's birth, three conferences were held in honor of the occasion and each entertained an international audience. This collection of essays reflects the scope of Robert Louis Stevenson's achievement and the range of current critical response. The first section contains four critical overviews that include an analysis of the Stevensonian imagination, an assessment of the author's literary theory, an examination of the coded significance of burial and reanimation in Stevenson's Wrong Box and other works, and an examination of the use of both Scottish and South Seas islands in his fiction. The second section contains three essays that examine the many-faceted Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other works--An Inland Voyage, A Child's Garden of Verses, The Dynamiter, The Master of Ballantrae, and Prayers Written at Vailima--are the subjects of the six essays in the third section. Three essays on biography, popular culture, and personal response are in the fourth section.

This Top Five Classics illustrated edition of Dubliners by James Joyce includes: • All 15 unabridged stories by James Joyce, formatted as the author intended • 18 illustrative period photographs, including 13 portraits of Dublin by famed photographer J.J. Clarke • An informative Introduction and Author Bio James Joyce’s first published book of fiction, Dubliners collects 15 stories about turn-of-the-century Dublin and her people, including the author’s immortal “The Dead.” Described by Joyce as chapters in the moral history of his hometown, the stories collected here form a progression from childhood to maturity, and from private to public spheres. All of the stories are presented with period photographs of Dublin, including 13 by noted Irish photographer J.J. Clarke, whose portraits of 1900-era Dubliners would become famous for their immediacy and intimacy. A perfect introduction to James Joyce, this landmark work of modern literature remains both accessible and profound, a collection of luminous stories that can be reread again and again.