The Robert Louis Stevenson Archive

1993

Angus, David. "Robert Louis Stevenson: The Secret Sources." Studies in Scottish Literature 28 (1993): 81-91.

[Traces the author’s search for sources of characters and settings in Weir of Hermiston. Links Lord Glenalmond with the historical Lord Meadowbank, the two Kirsties to women buried in the Old Calton Burial Ground, and the cairn to an obelisk in the same graveyard.]

Bevan, Bryan. Robert Louis Stevenson: Poet and Teller of Tales. London: Rubicon; New York: St. Martin’s, 1993.

Block, Edwin F., Jr. (1993). Rituals of Dis-integration. Romance and Madness in the Victorian Psychomythic Tale. New York/London: Garland.
[The ‘psychomythic tale’ is (i) a narrative about self vs society, self vs instinct; (ii) an inverted/demonic romance emphasizing psychological over physical action—not a melodramatic unravelling of a mystery but an individual’s struggle for psychic maturity; (iii) an exploration of fear and desire, of the instinctive, the uncanny and the forbidden; (iv) involving an individual with a mysterious or primitive past and illicit or archaic desires; (v) a suggested mapping of the individual onto society. The authors studied by Block are RLS, Paget, Pater, Yeats, Symonds and James. The psychomythic tale has affinities with classical tragedy; (i) mythic sources (“frequent adaptation of folktale and mythic structure”, Block 1993: 16), (ii) inevitable failure of the protagonist, (iii) structural reliance on coincidence and inexplicable forces (internal and external). (9-10). pp. 11-30, ‘Generic Features and the Example of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’.]

Clunas, Alexander B. "‘A Double Word’: Writing and Justice in The Master of Ballantrae." Studies in Scottish Literature 28 (1993): 55-74.
[Characterizes The Master of Ballantrae as a combination of adventure fiction and investigation of the self. Calls it "an astute fable on the nature of fiction." Traces Mackellar’s changing opinion of James and the resultant modification of the narrative.]

Dury, Richard, ed. The Annotated Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. [Milan]: Guerini, 1993

———. "Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Textual Variants." Notes and Queries 40 (1993): 490-92.
[Lists variations between printer’s copy and first printed editions (British and American) of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Proposes that William Veeder, in previous examination of textual variants, likely only looked at the American edition, which has more variants from the printer’s copy than the British edition.]

Dolvers, Horst. "‘Quite a Serious Division of Creative Literature’: Lord Lytton’s Fables in Song and R.L. Stevenson’s Prose Fables." Archiv fur das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 230.1 (1993): 62-77.

Fessenden, Mary Tracy. "Saving the Soul of the Social Body: The Secularizing of Social Difference in Anglo-American Fiction." Diss. U of Virginia, 1993. DAI 54 (1994): 2613A.
[Argues that, by rescuing "the newly contested boundary dividing human consciousness from brute matter," Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tacitly supports "the moral legitimacy of racial imperialism."]

Graff, Marc-Ange (1993). ‘Le poète est lecteur’. Revue de Littérature Comparée 2 : 243-66.
[In the ‘Ode marítima’ (1915), Álvaro de Campos (the ‘Futurist’ and homosexual ‘persona’ of  Fernando Pessoa) the ‘Grande Pirata’ sings ‘Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest. / Yo-ho ho and a bottle of rum’ and then shouts (quoting Flint’s last words in Treasure Island) ‘Darby M'Graw-aw-aw-aw-aw! / Darby M'Graw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! / Fetch a-a-aft th ru-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-um, Darby’. Shortly before this passage we have as a single line ‘Marooned!’ which reminds us of Benn Gunn’s ‘No, marooned!’ Flint’s last cry is a kind of satanic ‘Eli Eli lema sebachtani’ in his inverted ecstasy. The struggle for treasure is seen by Álvaro de Campos as a struggle of forces and perverse desires against the forces of cohesion for possession of the ego. ‘Pour toute une generation d’écrivains, Stevenson apparaîtra comme une modèle, une source d’ispiration ou comme le fondateur d’une type de littérature moderne’ (p. 250). Other writers who have praised or been influenced by Stevenson include Jack London, Blaise Cendrars, Pierra MacOrlan, Philippe Soupault, Jorge Luis Borges, Valéry Larbaud.]

Green, Meredith Anne. "‘Merely a Petty Experimentalist’: Perceptions of Sympathy in Scientific Medecine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Texts." Diss. Arizona State U, 1993. DAI 54 (1994): 4101A.
[Citing multiple texts (including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), argues that, with the advent of scientific medicine, literature became increasingly suspicious of physicians.]

Helgesen, Anne. "A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured." And I Hanske: Tidsskrift for Norsk Dukketeaterforening 11.4 (1993): 33-37.

Hendershot, Cyndy. "Overdetermined Allegory in Jekyll and Hyde." Victorian Newsletter 84 (1993): 35-38.
[JH is an allegory: abstract parts of the psyche are reified. Jekyll reads his life in terms of crude binary oppositions, but the novel itself works ‘in an overdetermined allegorical mode’: id and superego (i.e. Jekyll-rejecting-Hyde) demonstrate their interpenetration, as Freud was to suggest. All the superego-dominated characters also have Hyde-like characteristics.]

Honaker, Lisa. "Reviving Romance: Gender, Genre, and the Late-Victorian Anti-Realists." Diss. Rutgers U, 1993. DAI 54 (1993): 939A.
[Examines the shift in the ideal of character in Victorian boys’ adventure fiction from the spiritual/female to the action-oriented/male. Cites Treasure Island, New Arabian Nights, Prince Otto, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.]

Jensen, Paul M. (1993). ‘Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes: The Silent Years’. Video Watchdog 17 (May/June 1993): 42-59.
[Differences with Stevenson’s story of silent film versions; compares commercially-available versions of the films.]

Johanningsmeier, Charles Alan. "Buying and Selling Words by the Thousand: Newspaper Syndicates and the American Literary Marketplace." Diss. Indiana U, 1993. DAI 54 (1994): 3436A.
[Examines and evaluates the influence of newspaper syndicates on the literature in the United States from 1860 to 1900. Charts their effects on texts by many authors, including RLS.]

Kramer, Jürgen (1993). ‘Multiple Selves in 19^th Century British Fiction’. Hans Ulrich Seeber & Walter Göberl (eds.). Anglistentag 1992 Stuttgart. Proceedings. Vol XIV. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 388-96.
[The first section (referring to work by Elias and Horkheimer & Adorno) outlines the way the modern individual was formed  (to permit the functioning of the modern state) through an acceptance of the dominance of work and reason, and the supression of instincts, passions and the irrational. The result is the production of Freud’s ‘foreign country within’ (the repressed parts of the personality) which we can see as lying behind the narrative figure of the double or the multiple self. Hogg’s Justified Sinner and its presentation of a divided self can be seen as an outcome of the logic of the system of extreme Calvinism. In contrast Dr Jekyll an Mr Hyde is more about ‘a mere polity of multifarious … denizens’, as shown in narrative fragmentation (in contrast to Hogg’s binary division). However, remembering that the civilizing-process theories of Elias applies only to an elite, we can also see the 19^th-century literary double as a representation of the way the established elite project what they suppress in themselves onto those that they exclude from their ranks. Hyde is therefore the social, physical and sexual outcast. In any case, doubles and multiple selves seem to be the price we pay for a certain type of civilization. ]

Lapierre, Alexandra. Fanny Stevenson: Entre passion et liberté. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1993.
[French] Portrays Fanny as an adventurous woman even without RLS’s influence. Inserts an excessive number of faked narrative scenes. [cf, Jean-Pierre Naugrette, Studies in Scottish Literature 28 (1993): 250-53.]

Lumsden, Alison (1993). ‘Postmodern Thought and the Fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson.’ In R.D.S. Jack and Kevin McGinley (eds). Of Lion and of Unicorn: Essays on Anglo-Scottish Literary Relations in Honour of Prof. John MacQueen. Edinburgh: Quadriga, 1993. Pp. 115–38.

[In his essays S explores human activity as ‘multivalent, ambiguous and de-centred’: ‘we shall never reach the goal… there is no such place’ (‘El Dorado’), ‘the whole world a labyrinth without end or issue’ (‘Crabbed Age’). The same ideas are later explored in his fiction: the Treasure Island map-led quest leads to an empty ‘great excavation’ and David Balfour’s relationship with his uncle is not resolved by his long journey. More importantly, Jim and David abandon naïve moral categories of good and evil and come to understand the multifaceted and ambiguous nature of human experience.

S’s attempt to accommodate to the lack of absolutes and essence (his ‘travelling hopefully’) has affinities with Wittgenstein, who saw language and human activity as not corresponding to final meaning but to the continuous evolution of ‘game rules’. Some of S’s characters (like Charles Darnaway in ‘The Merry Men) adopt this strategy while others (Charles’s uncle; Dr Jekyll) come to grief by their totalising system of strict binary categories of good and evil.

Ballatrae notably undermines any totalising fixed disourse, with the binary opposition of the two brothers continually called into question. Their apparent polarization is ‘not in essence a battle between good and evil, but, rather, a perversion… brought about by their attempt to negate multivalence’.

The multifaceted nature of experience is embodied by S in the romance mode, which captures multiplicity and slippage better than analytic modes of writing. In his later fictions he adds notable narrative indeterminacy and labyrinthine textuality, as in Ballantrae, where the  alternative discourses and suggestion of supernatural elements continually undermine Mackellar’s authority and empiricism. ]

Maertens, James Warren. "Promethean Desires: The Technician-Hero and Myths of Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Literature." Diss. U Minnesota, 1993. DAI 54 (1994): 4452A.
[sees Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as corroborating evidence for argument that the technician-hero represents the Victorian Promethean Complex, which attempts to rectify the split between disembodied reason and embodied love.

McLynn, F[rank].J. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Biography. London: Hutchinson; New York: Random House, 1993.

Menikoff, Barry. "Introduction: Fable, Fiction, and Modernism." Tales from the Prince of Storytellers. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Ed. Barry Menikoff. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1993. 1-37.
[Compares late-Victorian British (particularly Scottish), American, and French influences on the short story genre, and relates RLS’s attitudes toward the different national strains. Systematically traces themes in the short stories. Argues that the inconclusiveness with which so many of Stevenson’s works end is the result of the author’s attitude of ambiguity toward life—an attitude that anticipates literary modernism.]

Pick, J.B. The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1993.
[Includes the essay "Mr. Stevenson and Mr. Hyde: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)." Groups Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Frankenstein, Dracula, and other stories as "tales which live as myth" among those who have not read the texts. Traces the novella’s debt to Hogg’s Justified Sinner. Shows the influence of the Calvinist paradox on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, citing illuminating evidence in The Master of Ballantrae.]

Rose, Brian Andrew. "Transformations of Terror: American Dramatizations of Stevenson’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and the Dramaturgy of Anxiety." Diss. Ohio State U, 1993. DAI 54 (1993): 2803A-2804A.
[Studies fourteen American dramatic adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Traces the development of recurrent motifs and structures chronologically.]

Shaddock, Jennifer. "Culture Through Anarchy: British Representations of Anarchism, 1840-1907." Diss. Rutgers U, 1993. DAI 54 (1994): 2592A.
[Explores the extent to which RLS maintained and subverted Carlyle’s and Arnold’s definitions of culture and anarchy with reference to The Dynamiter.]

Smith, R. McClure (1993). "The Strange Case of Valerie Martin and Mary Reilly." Narrative 1iii: 245-64.

Stefan, Edwin S. (1993). ‘A Psychological Walk with Robert Louis Stevenson’.  Journal of Religion & Psychical Research 16.iv: 212-7.

[A brief overview of influences on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: immediately precipitating factors (the dream, Frankenstein and folk tales, French psychology), and predisposing factors (Cummy’s stories, self-experimentation by Edinburgh doctors, Dr Knox, Deacon Brodie).]

Waters, Karen Volland. "‘The Perfect Gentleman’: Masculine Control in Victorian Men’s Fiction, 1870-1901." Diss. U Maryland—College Park, 1993. DAI 54 (1993): 1813A.
[In chapter IV, argues that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde articulates "the breakdown of gentlemanly self-control" in late Victorian culture.]

1992

Bell, Ian. Robert Louis Stevenson: Dreams of Exile, A Biography. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1992.

den Boef, August Hans. "Drie vrouwen spelen met een schaduw: recente bewerkingen van [Three Women Play with a Shadow: Recent Versions of] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." De Gids 155 (1992): 762-69.

Chatterjee, Lipika. "Imperialist Discoures in the Works of Three Victorian Writers: Anthony Trollope, R.L. Stevenson, and Olive Schreiner." Diss. Pennsylvania State U, 1992. DAI 53 (1992): 1524A-25A.
[In part, shows how RLS’s writings reflect British imperialism.]

Harman, Claire. Introduction. Essays and Poems. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: J.M. Dent; Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992. ix-xvii.
[Largely biographical. Relates the influences on RLS’s essays and poems by such notables as Lamb, Carlyle, Archer, and James.]

Heath, Tim. "Boys’ Adventure Books and Late Victorian Imperialism." Thesis U Alberta, 1992. MAI 31 (1993): 1027.
[Examines Treasure Island and other texts as evidence to argue that European social construction of "the boy" enabled justification of British imperialism.]

Kramer, Jürgen (1992). ‘The Strange/r Case of The Beach of Falesá: A Reading of R. L. Stevenson’s first realistic South Sea story’. In Buttjes, Dieter et al. (eds.). Neue Brennpunkte des Englishunterrichts. Festschrift für Helmut Heuer zum sechzigsten Geburtstag. Frankfurt am Main etc.: Peter Lang. Pp. 78-87.
[Stevenson’s immersion in Samoan culture is partly shown in his choice of names: (i) Wiltshire is a man of contradictions: a cheating ‘welsher’ with noble instincts, a weak ‘wilt’ (successor of Vigours) who gains strength and is known as ‘Vilivili’, meaning ‘to spin’ or ‘to strive’ in Samoan; (ii) Case is ‘a case’ (a strange character) known as ‘Ese’, ‘other’, ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’ in Samoan; (iii) Uma is Samoan for ‘all’ or ‘complete’;  (iv) Falesá in Samoan means ‘sacred house’ or ‘tabooed house’ (like Wiltshare’s house); and there is a village in Samoa called Fálefá, 20 miles east of Apia (and Falesá is ‘the last village to the east’). Nevertheless the narrative is still seen from a European point-of-view with Wiltshire and Case as central characters. They are opposed but also interestingly similar: economic exploiters, convinced of their own racial superiority, desiring to murder each other, yet both devoted to a native wife. ]

Kreitzer, Larry. "R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Romans 7:14-25." Literature and Theology 6.2 (1992): 125-44.

Letley, Emma. Introduction. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and Selected Travel Writings. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. vii-xviii.
[Relates the emotional and cultural contexts in which RLS wrote his major travel essays. Notes the differences between the published travels and the manuscript diary.]

Menikoff, Barry (1992), ‘”These Problematic Shores”: Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Seas’. Simon Gatrell (ed.) (1992). The Ends of the Earth 1876-1918 (Vol. 4 of English Literature and the Wider World). London: Ashfield. 141-155.

Miura, Toshiaki. Gedai sakka no gohou to buntai [The Language and Style of Modern Novelists]: Stevenson, Maugham, Hemingway, Steinbeck. Tokyo: Bunka Shobou Hakubunsha, 1992.

Naugrette, Jean-Pierre. Preface. Two Gothic Tales: Deux Contes noirs. By Robert Louis Stevenson. N.p.: Le Livre de Poche, 1992. 7-21.

Perrot, Jean. "Pan and Puer Aeternus: Aetheticism and the Spirit of the Age." Poetics Today 13 (1992): 155-67.
[Relates RLS’s essay "Child’s Play" to his portrayal of youthful characters (particularly Jim Hawkins) to Pater’s notion of "the poet-people." Argues that RLS, not Barrie, initiated the "Pan archetype" of the unreliable young narrator.]

Royle, Trevor. Introduction. Travels with a Donkey, An Inland Voyage, The Silverado Squatters. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: J.M. Dent & Sons; Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992. i-xiv.

Sanger, Andrew. Introduction. An Inland Voyage. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Heathfield, England: Cockbird, 1992.

Scheick, William J. "The Ethos of Stevenson’s ‘The Isle of Voices.’" Studies in Scottish Literature 27 (1992): 143-49.
[Interprets "The Isle of Voices" as RLS’s expression of his own mortality and as an exposé on the relationship between life and art.]

Shaw, Marion. "‘To Tell the Truth of Sex’: Confession and Abjection in Late Victorian Writing." Rewriting the Victorians: Theory, History, and the Politics of Gender. Ed. Linda M. Shires. New York: Routledge, 1992. 87-100.
[Uses Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau as textual basis for argument that Victorian confession narratives ironically serve to obscure rather than discover truth due to their gender-based concepts of reality.]

Sutherland, John. Introduction. The Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermiston. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: J.M. Dent; Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992.

1991

Amelinckx, Carol Cedar. "Two Images of the Victorian Child: Stevenson’s and Rossetti’s Different Views." The Image of the Child: Proceedings of the 1991 International Conference of the Children’s Literature Association, University of Southern Mississippi, 1991. Ed. Sylvia Patterson Iskander. Battle Creek, MI: Children’s Lit. Assn., 1991. 58-63.

Day, A. Grove. Introduction(?). Travels in Hawaii. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1991

Gannon, Susan R. "The Illustrator as Interpreter: N.C. Wyeth’s Illustrations for the Adventure Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson." Children’s Literature: Annual of the Modern Language Association Division on Children’s Literature and the Children’s Literature Association 19 (1991): 90-106.
[Argues that Wyeth’s illustrations are of scenes that RLS had not "made most striking" and therefore effectively add to the story.]

Gottwald, Maria. "Romance in The Sire de Malétroit’s Door by Robert Louis Stevenson." Anglica Wratislaviensia 21 (1991): 65-69.

Halberstam, Judith Marion. "Parasites and Perverts: Anti-Semitism and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction." Diss. U of Minnesota, 1991. DAI 52 (1991): 2149A.
[Interprets Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and other "Gothic novels") in light of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism. Argues that "monstrosity" arises out of Victorian fear of otherness and is expressed as parasitism or perversion.]

Hetzler, Leo A. "Chesterton and Robert Louis Stevenson." The Chesterton Review: The Journal of the Chesterton Society 17 (1991): 177-87.

Lys, Waldemar. "The War in the Members: The Concepts of Man’s Inherent Evils in R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Master of Ballantrae." Kwartalnik neofilologiczny 38 (1991): 321-39.

Mallardi, Rosella. "‘Tra il popolo del sogno’: Riletture critica di Treasure Island." Confronto Letterario 8 (1991): 35-63.

McCracken-Flesher, Caroline. "Thinking Nationally/Writing Colonially? Scott, Stevenson, and England." Novel 24 (1991): 296-318.
[Interprets "Thrawn Janet" as a metaphor for Stevenson’s duplicitous attitude toward the English. Argues that RLS "exploits the Scottish sign’s heightened instability to disrupt the colonial narrative that has appropriated and debased it." A burdensome essay with insufficient evidence and inordinate jargon, which, in the end, tends to undermine its thesis that Stevenson paid particular attention to issues of nationality. (JP)]

Moore, John D. "Emphasis and Suppression in Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Fabrication of the Self in Jim Hawkins’ Narrative." CLA Journal 34 (1991): 436-52.

Morrow, Sean. "A Copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Footnote to History Annotated by the Author." Notes and Queries 38 (1991): 334-36.
[Relates author’s chance purchase of copy of A Footnote to History returned to RLS by Baron von Pilsach, President of the Municipal Council of Apia. Expounds on relations between the two.]

Naugrette, Jean-Pierre. "Discours du corps, ordre du discours: De Stevenson á Kafka." Les Figures du corps dans la litterature et la peinture anglaises et americaines de la Renaissance á nos jours. Ed. Bernard Brugiere. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991. 139-48.

———. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Dans le labyrinthe." L’Errance. Intro. J.J. Lecercle. Paris: Univ. de Paris X, 1991. 9-37.

Ridley, M.R. Introduction. The Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermiston. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: J.M. Dent; Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1991.

Sanders, Scott Russell. Afterword. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Assocition, 1991.

Sandison, Alan. "Robert Louis Stevenson: A Modernist in the South Seas." Durham University Journal 52.1 (1991): 45-51.

Savater, fernando. "Stevenson, moralista." Vuelta 15.180 (1991): 33-34.

Stoneley, Peter. Introduction. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Complete Shorter Fiction. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Ed. Peter Stoneley. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991. vii-xiv.
[Follows the contemporary popular and critical responses to RLS’s works. Notes the state of the publishing industry in RLS’s time.]

Tropp, Martin. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Schopenhauer, and the Power of the Will." The Midwest Quarterly 32 (1991): 141-55.
[Connects Schopenhauer’s theory that much of the will is repressed by the conscious mind to the distinctly different actions of Jekyll and Hyde. Asserts that Hyde’s brutality is a product of Jekyll’s personal/professional indifference toward bodies.]

Turlo, Margaret Mary. "The Criminal in the Nineteenth-Century Novel." Diss. U California—Riverside, 1991. DAI 52 (1991): 2136A.
[Bakhtinian perspective. Explores the ideological conflicts inherent in the language/action discourse of criminal characters. Focuses on French and British texts, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.]

 1990

Angus, David."Youth on the Prow: The First Publication of Treasure Island." Studies in Scottish Literature 25 (1990): 83-99.
[Gives extensive ennumeration and explication of textual variants in Treasure Island between serialized Young Folks edition (1 Oct 1881-28 Jan 1882) and first book printing (Nov 1883).]

Bernd, Metz. Introduction(?). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Trans. Stefano Gaudiano. N.p.: Catalan, 1990.
[Italian]

Calder, Jenni. Introduction. Memories and Portraits. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Glasgow: Richard Drew, 1990. [ix-xiii.]
[Relates the essays of Memories and Portraits to the events in RLS’s life up to 1887 (when Memories and Portraits was published). Traces the influences of his father’s death and his exchanges with Henry James on his theory of literature. Asserts that the essays contain an "underlying theme" of mortality balanced by the "power of literature.".]

———. Preface. St. Ives: The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. By Robert Louis Stevenson, chapters 31-35 by Jenni Calder.. Glasgow: Richard Drew, 1990. [xiii-xvi.]
[Gives details about the socio-economic context in which RLS wrote St. Ives. Asserts that the novel is "simply a yarn" read "for the sheer charm of incident." Briefly explains the plot RLS constructed, Quiller-Couch’s additions, and the reasons behind her new additions.]

Crawford, Robert. "Frazer and Scottish Romanticism: Scott, Stevenson, and The Golden Bough." Sir James Frazer and the Literary Imagination: Essays in Affinity and Influence. Ed. Robert Frazer. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990. 18-37.
[(Pays much more attention to Scott than to RLS.) Traces similarities in the careers of RLS and Sir James Frazer. Argues that they are "complementary members of a Scottish cultural tradition" having shared influences but not having influenced one another much.]

Linehan, Katherine Bailey. "Taking Up with Kanakas: Stevenson’s Complex Social Criticism in ‘The Beach of Falesá.’" English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 33iv (1990): 407-22.
[Suggests that RLS’s "critique of colonialism incorporates a remarkable dimension of feminist insight into the parallel workings of racial and sexual domination." Argues that, though racist and sexist by modern standards, "The Beach of Falesá" indicates that Stevenson was less biased toward non-whites and women than most of his contemporaries.]

Loxley, Diana. Problematic Shores: The Literature of Islands. New York: St. Martin’s, 1990.
[Includes chapter on Treasure Island (129-69). Makes misstatements regarding Silver’s blindness and the text’s "immediate and almost univocal acclaim." Argues that Treasure Island is one text in a succession of reworkings of the Robinson Crusoe narrative. Through its focus on youthful colonialism, ignores Livesey’s contribution to the narrative. Argues in part that, in its attention to the past, Treasure Island forecasts the dissolution of the British Empire.]

Mann, David D. "The Pugh Gift of the George Hewitt Myers, Yale 1898, Collection of Robert Louis Stevenson Materials." Yale University Library Gazette 64 (1990): 167-71.
[Details the Myers collection of Stevensoniana.]

Mehew, Ernest. Introduction. The Wrong Box. By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. London(?): Nonesuch, 1990.

Menikoff, Barry. "New Arabian Nights: Stevenson’s Experiment in Fiction." Nineteenth-Century Literature 45 (1990): 339-62.
[Relates the publication history and reception of New Arabian Nights. Offers generic lineages for each of the stories. Reflects on the text’s influences on a variety of authors including James, de Maupassant, and Doyle
Abstract:
Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the most imaginative and versatile writers of his time, a versatility reflected in his lifelong habit of experimentation in fiction. He shared with contemporaries like James and Maupassant an interest in theoretical and technical questions as well as a belief that fiction was the most supple medium for conveying truth. In New Arabian Nights (1882) Stevenson amalgamated French and American models and created the modern English short story. The Suicide Club and The Rajah's Diamond joined seven separate stories into a single, integrated text. By means of narrative devices, portraiture, cityscapes, and a pattern of themes and images, Stevenson constructed a cycle of stories that revealed the dark worlds of fin de siecle London and Paris, exposing the moral degradation of modern culture. They are grim experiments in realism, counterpointed by a mordant and even extravagant humor. The Suicide Club is a prolonged meditation on death while The Rajah's Diamond discloses sexuality and power as subterranean impulses for wealth and greed. Stevenson connects these profound issues of life to his abiding preoccupation with problems of art. He draws upon contemporary French crime fiction (which he admired for its originality and realism) in order to blur if not complicate the border between art and life. Lives, he implies, are like stories, and their endings are not always as planned or expected. Stevenson's narrative (in a textbook postmodernist manner) is brought to a dramatic and irreverent conclusion, for art is not much different from life, and nothing lasts forever. Art is both anodyne and antidote, protection against a hostile set of forces that constitute modern living, protection against loneliness, desolation, despair, and the terrible recognition that the worst is in the best of us. At the same time it is only an artifice, neither a substitute for nor a representation of reality. New Arabian Nights demonstrates the association between historical form (the short story) and cultural content, just as it illustrates the disjunction between the world as it is perceived in our imagination and the one we are forced to encounter in our lives.]

Menneteau, Patrick (1990). ‘Pourquoi l’étrange psyché de Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?’ Ecosse Littérature et Civilisation [université de Grenoble III] 9: 53-63.
[A central motif in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the cheval glass, which can be deciphered as defining a reading key to the novel when the latter is considered a mirror to human nature, asserting truths that can be felt in some sort of spiritual communion rather than asserted by means of a rational discourse.]

Naugrette, Jean-Pierre "The Master of Ballantrae: Fragments d’un discours aventeureux." Etudes Anglaises: Grande Bretagne, Etats-Unis 43.1 (1990): 29-40.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Foreword. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. [ix-xvii.]
[Terms Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde an "autonomous creation"—i.e., one known by those who have no first-hand experience of it. Emphasizes RLS’s "didactic intention" without defining that supposed intention. Makes comparisons with Wilde and Freud.]

Riem, Antonella. Il seme e l’urna: Il ‘doppio’ nella letteratura inglese. Ravenna: Longo, 1990.

Ruddick, William. "Scott, Stevenson, and Barrie: Edwin Muir’s Rejection of Prose Romance." Edwin Muir: Centenary Assessments. Eds. C.J.M. MacLachlan and D.S. Robb. Aberdeen: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1990. 95-101.
[Traces Muir’s attitude toward Scottish prose fiction. Puts Muir’s opinion of RLS in a favorable light (compared to opinions of Scott and Barrie), paying paritcular attention to the positive reaction to Weir of Hermiston.]

Sedewick, Eve (1990). The Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[homosexual themes in Stevenson’s works.]

Showalter, Elaine (1990). Sexual Anarchy: gender and culture at the fin-de-siècle. [ch. 6: ‘Jekyll’s Closet’]. New York: Viking (London: Bloomsbury, 1991).
[Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and homosexuality in late-Victorian Britain.]

Skovmand, Michael (1990). ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: On Bachelor Gentlemen and Significantly Absent Females’, in Proceedings of the Nordic Association of English Studies 1990.

Storey, R.J. Foreword. St. Ives: The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England. By Robert Louis Stevenson, chapters 31-35 by Jenni Calder. Glasgow: Richard Drew, 1990. [v-xii.]
[Relates the plot of St. Ives to historical information concerning the actual ship The True Blooded Yankee. Tells of Storey’s experiences discovering that information. Hypothesizes that RLS learned much of the same information through orally transmitted family stories. Traces Quiller-Couch’s difficulties with the conclusion to his lack of knowledge about American privateers during the War of 1812. Lauds Calder’s new concluding chapters.]

Woods, Sandra R. (1990). ‘Stevenson, James and the Arts of Fiction’. Bulletin of the West Virginian Association of College English Teachers 12: 17-25.

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