Stevenson is remembered as a writer of romances, essays, and travel books.

In all of his work Stevenson displayed the talent that prompted the painter John Everett Millaise to remark: "Nobody living can see with such an eye as that fellow, and nobody is such a master of his tools." Stevenson's eye, as Wood plainly shows, was not blind to the miseries of the places he visited. Although he was an agnostic, Stevenson came to the defense of the Christian missionaries because he believed they were trying to improve the lives of the people in the South Seas. For similar reasons he also championed Father Damien's work in the leper colony on Molokai.

The role of white planter in Samoa had a natural appeal to a personality as theatrical as Stevenson's. But he genuinely liked the Polynesian people and did all he could to win just...