Introduced by Jenni Calder and Roderick Watson. Kidnapped – Catriona – The Master of Ballantrae – Weir of Hermiston These four great novels take us deep into Robert Louis Stevenson’s imaginative and bitter-sweet relationship with his native country. Kidnapped, and its sequel Catriona, are renowned the world over as supreme stories of adventure and romance. On another level they also explore the subtle divisions of Scottish history and character in the eighteenth century, and (some would say) the present day. The Master of Ballantrae takes a darker and more disturbing turn, with its tale of rival brothers caught in a web of hatred, obsession, love and betrayal which draws them to their end in the frozen wastes of North America. Stevenson’s fascination with the divided nature of the human self (most obviously demonstrated in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) appears again in the Weir of Hermiston with its terrible confrontation between a father and his son. With an unsurpassed combination of physical adventure and psychological insight, The Scottish Novels have moved and thrilled readers and writers from Stevenson’s contemporaries to the present day.

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, travel writer, and essayist. His most famous works are “Treasure Island” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Now he is one of the most translated authors in the world. Praised by many as a potential masterpiece, “Weir of Hermiston” tells the story of young Archie Weir from a rich Edinburgh family. Having abandoned all attempts to get along with his father, Archie is banished from his family and sent to live as the local landlord on family property in the Borders hamlet Hermiston. There Archie meets and falls in love with a young local girl named Kirstie.

This edition of "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde / Weir of Hermiston" includes Stevenson's essay "The Importance of Dreams". Both these stories deal in different ways with a topic which fascinated Stevenson: the duality of human nature.

Mr. Henry James, speaking of the quarrel between Alan Breck and David Balfour in Kidnapped, declares that he knows of "few better examples of the way genius has ever a surprise in its pocket — keeps an ace, as it were, up its sleeve." And in Weir of Hermiston we have a surprise of an even higher order from Stevenson's pocket; that pocket which during his lifetime seemed like the proverbial small boy's—almost inexhaustible, stuffed full of a delightfully heterogeneous mass, sometimes of jingling trinkets, and sometimes of the oddest and rarest treasures. It may seem rash to declare a half-finished and half-revised book the greatest achievement of an author who had so high a passion for finality as Stevenson, but many will unhesitatingly declare Weir of Hermiston Stevenson's best book.

Explores the detailed evolution of the work through its composition and on to eventual posthumous publicationStevenson's unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston, has been entirely re-edited from his final manuscript, revealing a rather different novel from the bowdlerised version produced posthumously by his friends. Stevenson revisits the conflicted Scotland of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott as well as that of his own youth, but also responds to recently published novels. A substantial essay explores the complex early publication history of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic, and exceptionally full explanatory notes and other background information are provided.Key FeaturesComposition history drawing on draft manuscript material in various US archivesDetailed account of early publication history in UK and USADetails of early reception in UK and USAFull Explanatory Notes including citations from draft manuscript materialHistorical and Geographical Notes