He also wrote memorable poetry and forgettable plays, but it was short fiction--
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)--that first gained him a large adult readership, and short fiction was a form he practiced to a certain extent throughout his life.
If one takes approximately fifty thousand words as a limit, Stevenson produced approximately thirty short stories and novellas himself; collaborated with his wife on a volume of short stories; coauthored a novella with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne; and authored twenty very short narratives he called fables. His short fiction varies enormously in length, technique, and theme; it also appeared before the public in several different contexts. Stevenson published three volumes of collected short stories by himself besides the one with his wife. Most of his stories were published in periodicals before being collected, and several stories published in periodicals were left out of the various collections. One of his best, "The Tale of Todd Lapraik," is told by one character to another in Stevenson's last completed full-length novel, Catriona: A Sequel to "Kidnapped" (1893).
Except for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
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