Beginning his literary career as a writer of such quaint books of travel as An Inland Voyage and Through the Cevennes with a Donkey, such charming essays as Roads, Ordered South, El Dorado, and many others, Mr Stevenson was not long in entering the arena as a story-teller. His first printed stories were A Lodging for the Night, which appeared in Temple Bar in October 1877; The Sire de Maletroit's Door, in the same magazine in January 1878; and Will o' the Mill, in Cornhill, also in January 1878.

In Cornhill, in 1876 had appeared the series of essays republished as Virginibus Puerisque, and in 1877 and 1878 those afterwards collected under the title Familiar Studies of Men and Books. There also began, now and then, to be short stories from his pen in Cornhill, Macmillan, Longmans, Mr H. Norman's Christmas Annual, The Court and Society Review, and other magazines. These, as they added originality and a certain weirdness of plot to his already recognised beauty of style, still further attracted that cultured public which had at once accepted his earlier work as that of a master of English. As already stated, it was Will o' the Mill, a charmingly written story of still life, with a quiet philosophy all its own, that Mr Hamerton had pronounced a masterpiece of style. Markheim was a graphic, but very unpleasant, story of a murder; Olalla, a horrible, but powerfully written, sketch of hereditary insanity, with a beautiful setting of Italian scenery to relieve the gloomy picture.

Thrawn Janet which, with most of the tales in The Merry Men, was written at Pitlochry, appeared in Cornhill in 1880. Mr Stevenson himself considered it one of his best stories, and thought it an excellent piece of dialect writing. It is weird and impressive in the extreme, and no one who has read it is likely to forget the minister of Balweary in the vale of Dull, and his terrible experiences in the matter of a housekeeper; the 'het lowin' wind' and the coppery sky of that day on which he met the black man coming down by Dull water, and knew that he had spoken with the enemy of souls himself; or the awful storm, in which Satan finally came for all that was left of Thrawn Janet. Into this story of a few pages are condensed a power of forcible expression and a weirdness of theme which have not been surpassed in any of the larger books.

The Merry Men is a story of wreck and wickedness on a desolate West Highland island where the rocks called 'the Merry Men,' as the tides boil and foam among them, make, as it were, an undercurrent of mad laughter that forms a fitting accompaniment to the hideous passions of greed and murder and the dead level of human misery that are the prevailing atmosphere of the tale. It is one of the best of the stories forming the volume, to which it gives its name, published by Messrs Chatto & Windus in 1887.

In another collection of short tales Mr Stevenson also deals with the seamy side of life, and The New Arabian Nights published in 1882, and which contains the reprint of such stories as The Suicide Club, The Rajah's Diamond, The Sire de Maletroit's Door, and The Pavilion on the Links, is quite as gruesome and by no means less interesting than The Merry Men.

The Sire de Maletroit's Door and The Pavilion on the Links, are most graphically written, especially the latter with its splendid description of the dreary sea and the wide and wind-swept stretch of drearier links where the curious characters play their mysterious parts. It is interesting to know that Mr Stevenson wrote The Pavilion on the Links while he was very ill in California. All the stories in the two volumes are favourites, and many readers give a preference to The Suicide Club, The Rajah's Diamond, or Prince Florizel.

Providence and the Guitar is also one of his best stories. Prince Otto, the first draft of which was written at Monterey, is the peculiar but very beautifully written story of a prince with no fancy for princedom and no talent for governing, who leaves his vain young wife and his unscrupulous prime minister in power and goes roaming among his subjects only to hear some far from complimentary opinions of himself. In the end both prince and princess learn love and wisdom and find happiness in spite of the revolution that drives them from their tiny kingdom. It is a fanciful tale, the charm of which lies less in the rather vague characters, who have the haziness of motive and of personality of the figures in some old play, than in the absolute perfection of style and of description that make it a book to read and re-read with infinite pleasure.

Mr Stevenson says, in its dedicatory preface, that he meant to make of it a masterpiece; if he did not succeed in doing so, as a story, he certainly gave in it a picture of the woods so true to nature and so exquisite in style and in expression that it will live as among his best work.

Good as this earlier writing was he had not yet found in it his full inspiration, and it hardly appealed to so wide a public as the fresh and delightful stories of adventure to which he finally turned his attention. In connection with Mr Stevenson's fiction, it is interesting to note that in his boyhood he greatly enjoyed the stories of a novelist called Smythe, who at that time contributed to the London Journal, and whose work had its influence on the boy's future tales. Smythe's novels were full of stirring adventures, and many lads of that day, besides the aspiring novelist, were much impressed by them, and can even now recall incidents in them read so long ago as 1868!

He had applied for work to Mr Henderson, the Scotch editor of Young Folks, and to the acceptance of this application the world owes Treasure Island and the charming stories which followed it. The editor of Young Folks, who offered to take a story from him, showed him a treasure-hunting tale by Mr Peace, and asked him to give him something on the same lines. The result was The Sea Cook, which appeared in the paper in the autumn of 1881, and was not very highly paid for. It was written under the nom-de-plume of Captain North to give the idea the author was a sailor; it was not given a very important place in the paper and it had no very marked success as a serial. It was, with very little alteration, published by Messrs Cassell & Co. in 1883, under the name of Treasure Island, and it had an instant and well-deserved success. It is an excellent book for boys, full of stirring adventure, in the old-time fashion of fifty years ago, but it is much more; it is a book that grown-up folk, whose taste is still fresh enough to enjoy a good tale of the sea, delight in as heartily as the juniors. It was written while the Stevenson family were staying for a time at Braemar, and Mr Thomas Stevenson gave his son valuable help in it from his own experiences at sea while on his cruises of inspection round the coasts.

The Black Arrow also appeared in Young Folks during 1883 as by Captain North; it is said to have been very successful as a serial, but it has not been a great favourite in book form, and is one of the least interesting of his stories.

Kidnapped came out in 1886 in the same paper and was the first to be signed as by Robert Louis Stevenson. In its serial form it was not highly paid for but it had, when Messrs Cassell & Co. published it as a book, a large and an immediate success. It forms the first instalment of the delightful experiences of David Balfour, that somewhat pawky young Scot who, from the moment he leaves 'The Hawes Inn' at Queensferry and embarks on his adventures with Alan Breck and other strange worthies in Appin and elsewhere till we finally bid him good-bye on the last page of Catriona, never fails at odd times and places to remind one of Mr Stevenson himself at David's age and of what he might have been and done had David Balfour's fate been his in those early days of plot and turmoil in which his part is played.

Catriona, which is a continuation of Kidnapped, at first appeared in Atalanta, and was published in book form by Messrs Cassell & Co. in 1893. In the recent edition of 1898 both volumes are brought out as The History of David Balfour, and are beautifully illustrated. Catriona is a charming book, full of life and action, and the breezy, outdoor existence, in the picturing of which its author excels. The Edinburgh of the last half of the eighteenth century, with its quaint closes, and quainter manners, is admirably portrayed, and the old lady with whom Catriona lives, and Lord Prestongrange and his daughters, are very clever pictures from a bygone day. Indeed, Miss Grant is one of the best drawn women in all Mr Stevenson's books; she has life and reality in a greater degree than most of his female characters. She is true to feminine human nature in any age, and as she makes eyes at David Balfour from under her plumed hat, and flirts with him across the narrow close, she is very woman, and alive enough to be some later day judge's daughter of modern Edinburgh, coquetting with Mr Stevenson himself, while she playfully adjusts her becoming head-gear, and lets her long feathers droop to the best advantage.

She and the two Kirsties in the unfinished Weir of Hermiston stand out alone among all the heroines in Mr Stevenson's books as real breathing, living women. They are natural, they are possible, they have life and interest; all the rest are more or less lay figures put in because a heroine is necessary—the more's the pity evidently from the author's point of view!—and drawn somewhat perfunctorily by their creator, with but a limited knowledge of the virtues, the faults, the failings, and, above all, the 'little ways,' which go to make up the ordinary woman.

The women are undoubtedly a weakness in the author's work. It looks as if he had known intimately only exceptional women,—who, possibly, had left behind them, before he knew them well, most of a young girl's faults and follies, and some of her attractions also,—and had never found other women worth studying deeply, so that the girls in his books do not read real enough to interest one greatly, and it is almost a relief to take up Treasure Island, The Wrecker, or The Ebb Tide, in which there is very little about them. Lady Violet Greville, in a recent article, expresses much the same opinion. She says, 'The late Robert Louis Stevenson had no opinion of women writers, he said they were incapable of grasping the essential facts of life. He was a great master of style, but I doubt if he had much knowledge of feminine character'—a dictum in which many women will agree with her. She goes on to say that there is some truth in what he says of women writers, because women and men regard as essential quite different facts in life; and she explains it by saying that it is the difference of personality and of point of view. Certainly Mr Stevenson's point of view in regard to his heroines is not a satisfying one to most women.

Many men have drawn excellent female characters, just as a few women have given us life-like heroes. These exceptions, one imagines, must have been to some extent better able to appreciate the other sex thoroughly than most writers; but it strikes one as odd that Mr Stevenson, who had in himself so much of gentleness and of the essentially feminine, should have so continually failed to give a living interest to his heroines. Possibly had he lived longer, and had the maturing of his powers, so evident in Weir of Hermiston, been accompanied by a measure of improved health, the women of his later books might all have been as powerful creations as the two Kirsties promised to be.

His heroes are all that heart can desire, manly, brave, and natural; his villains make villainy interesting; so it may be forgiven him that scarcely one of his feminine characters lives in the reader's memory.

One of the most widely known of his books is that curious story, published in 1886, called The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the popularity of which, especially in America, was immense. It deals with man's dual nature, and while Dr Jekyll embodies the good side of it, Mr Hyde, with whom he is compelled continually to exchange bodies, as well as souls, is the evil side, and commits crimes so atrocious, that the miserable doctor is well-nigh driven to despair. It is a powerful subject, powerfully treated, and contains in its small compass more moral teaching than a hundred sermons. It has, particularly in America, been used by many clergymen as the foundation of their homilies.

The Master of Ballantrae, a weird and striking tale of the times of 'the forty-five,' is extraordinarily graphic both in its descriptions of places and of people. The gloomy house of Durrisdeer, with its stately panelled hall, the fine grounds so carefully laid out, the thick shrubberies, the spot where the duel was fought on the hard, frozen ground by the light of the flickering candles in the tall silver candlesticks, the wave-beaten point where the smuggling luggers land goods and passengers, and finally the awful journey through the uncleared woods of America, make a fit setting, in our memories, for the splendidly drawn pictures of the three Duries, the old father, the unappreciated Henry, the mocking master, their faithful land-steward, Mackellar, and the more shadowy personalities of the Frenchman, the lady, and the children. The tale is one of unrelieved horror, but it is a masterpiece nevertheless, and it has had a very large sale.

With his wife Mr Stevenson in More New Arabian Nights and The Dynamiter did some work of considerable interest, and with his stepson, Mr Lloyd Osbourne, he wrote that quaint tale, The Wrong Box. In collaboration also with Mr Lloyd Osbourne he wrote The Wrecker and The Ebb Tide.

The Wrecker is a wild and interesting story which had a large success. It originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine from August 1891 to July 1892, and was republished in book form by Messrs Cassell & Co. The scene is constantly changing in it, and the hero visits Edinburgh, stays in the students' quarter in Paris, personally conducts speculative picnics at San Francisco, distinguishes himself at the wreck on the lonely reef in mid-ocean, and finally, after appearing in England and Fontainbleau, tells his wonderful story to a friendly trader in the south seas. There is plenty of life and of action in the tale, and there are also some delightful descriptions of the Pacific and of the wonderful glamour lagoons and palm trees throw over the spirit of the man who learns to know and to love the beautiful South Sea islands.

The Ebb Tide, originally published in Mr Jerome K. Jerome's magazine To-day from November 1893 to February 1894, was republished in book form by Mr W. Heinemann in 1894. Like Treasure Island it is a tale without a heroine, almost, indeed, without the mention of a woman except Attwater's statuesque native servant and the shadowy personalities of Herrick's mother and fiancÉe in London, and Captain Davis's wife and his little girl, who died before she got the doll he had so carefully bought for her, and the memory of whom is the one soft spot in his dark soul. They are merely mentioned, however, and take no actual part in the story. It is not a pleasant tale, everyone in it is more or less bad; more by preference rather than less!—and for no one in it can one feel the slightest sympathy. There are villains and villains in fiction, and for some of them, for instance, Bret Harte's Jack Hamlin, or even the Master himself in The Master of Ballantrae, one can feel a sincere affection or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, but he, at least, has the courage of his iniquities. Attwater is not attractive either as villain or as religious enthusiast, but he is a fairly possible character and at least a degree less unpleasant than the American captain after his conversion. Captain Davis's effort to save Herrick's soul, given in the last paragraph of the book, is disagreeably profane in its familiarity with things sacred. Altogether it is not an attractive book, although it is an undoubtedly clever one; it has some redeeming features in the really lovely descriptions of the island and the lagoon; and the appearance of the divers in full working costume remind one of Mr Stevenson's own early experience in a diver's dress.

Without collaboration Mr Stevenson wrote the three pretty little tales of South Sea life reprinted, as Island Nights' Entertainments, in book form about 1893. The Beach of FalÉsa was published in The Illustrated London News from July 2nd to August 6th, 1892. The Bottle Imp appeared in Black and White from March 28th to April 4th, 1891, and The Isle of Voices was in The National Observer between 4th and 25th February of 1893.

They are charming stories, rich in local colour, and in all of them one sees that Mr Stevenson's quick eye for the essential in life has shown to him that among these simple islanders are to be found just the same elements of romance as among more highly civilised peoples, the same motives make and influence character there as elsewhere. So in Wiltshire and his relations with the islanders, in the curious stories of The Bottle Imp and The Isle of Voices, we are interested in a new set of people in fresh surroundings, and can in a large measure sympathise with the pleasure that the Samoans had in reading these tales of island life in their own tongue. The Bottle Imp was the first story ever read by the Samoans in their native language, and it raised their affection for 'Tusitala, the Teller of Stories' to positive enthusiasm.

St Ives is a bright story of adventure which Mr Stevenson had almost completed, and which Mr Quiller Couch was enabled very skilfully to finish with the assistance of the author's step-daughter, Mrs Strong, who had, besides being its amanuensis, helped Mr Stevenson with this story and been much in his confidence regarding it. It appeared first in The Windsor Magazine where it was received with favour. It is the history of a French prisoner in Edinburgh Castle during the wars of the great Napoleon. He makes, like the other prisoners, little carved ornaments for sale, and Flora, the heroine, has so touched him while buying these that he falls in love with her and presents her with a carved lion. She returns his sentiment of admiration, and after his escape she and her brother, a natural gentlemanly lad, hide Mr St Ives in the henhouse at Swanston Cottage where they live with a stern old aunt. The aunt is a well-drawn type of old-fashioned Scotchwoman, infinitely more natural and more interesting than the niece. In Edinburgh and round Mr Stevenson's own country home Swanston, the interest at first largely centres, and the writer gives a very graphic description of the home garden and the cottage and its outhouses,

One imagines the tales of John Todd the shepherd must have helped much in his splendid description of the escape into England with the drovers by the solitary drove roads, at one point of which the escaping prisoner has the honour of meeting and conversing with 'The Shirra,' so well loved on Tweed side and elsewhere. After many and marvellous adventures, Mr St Ives returns a free and pardoned man to sue, not in vain, for the hand of Flora.

Last, but, if one may judge by its powerful beginning, which is, alas! all that the master-hand had left of it, certainly best of Mr Stevenson's work is Weir of Hermiston. In the few perfectly finished chapters there is a fulness of power and a perfection of style that promised great things. As one read the description of the fierce old judge, his gentle artistic son, the cunning dandified friend, the two Kirsties, and the four black Elliot brothers, one felt that here indeed was congenial matter; and that in the tragedy of fierce human passion about to be played out amid wild moorland surroundings, Mr Stevenson would rise to a greater perfection and a nobler success than he had yet attained to.... It was not to be, the busy brain stopped instantaneously, the pen that had worked so happily all the morning was laid by for ever; and the world is infinitely the poorer for the sudden catastrophe of that sad December evening which left the home at Vailima desolate.

The beautiful Edinburgh Edition of Mr Stevenson's works—which his friends Mr Colvin and Mr Baxter have been seeing through the press—is almost completed; one, or at most, two volumes only being now unpublished. It consists of an edition of 1035 copies, and includes the plays and everything of interest that he has written, and it will number twenty-seven or perhaps twenty-eight volumes. While this book has been passing through the press, volume twenty-seventh has been issued. It contains St Ives, and practically completes the edition; but Mr Stevenson's widow and Mr Sydney Colvin, who are acting as his executor and his editor, have gratuitously given to the subscribers to this Edinburgh Edition a twenty-eighth volume, consisting of various odds and ends not hitherto made public. Of this, 'A New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses' and 'The Thermal Influence of Forests,' recall the period of his engineering and scientific training; and the interesting facsimile reproductions of the quaint 'Moral Emblems,' written by him at Davos in 1880 and 1882, and printed with illustrations on a toy printing press by the then very youthful Mr Lloyd Osbourne, are yet another proof that even in his time of acute invalidism he was busily and cheerily employed.