As the author of three of the most-loved adventure novels of all time-- Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--Robert Louis Stevenson has won a reputation as a great writer of books for children. Until recently, these three novels were regarded as Stevenson's only major contribution to literature in English. "It is one of the many paradoxes in the life of Robert Louis Stevenson," explains Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography contributor Robert Kiely, "that, though he was a worker and craftsman of extraordinary skill, his literary image is that of a whimsical amateur, an aesthetic drifter."

In the century since his death, however, Stevenson has also earned a reputation among critics as an important writer and novelist, ranking with other Victorian and Edwardian writers such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and Joseph Conrad. "We can admit that there have been...