Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, novelist, essayist and poet, is considered to be one of the great classic storytellers. Stevenson wrote a number of popular and enduring fantasies, including Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). He was a lifelong sufferer of tuberculosis and often travelled abroad in search of climates more healthy than his native Scotland. Finally he settled with his wife Frances, in Samoa, where he passed away in 1894.

Caroline McCracken-Flesher (Introduction) is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. She is an honorary fellow of the Association for the Study of Scottish Literature. Her books include Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow, The Doctor Dissected: A Cultural Autopsy of the Burke and Hare Novels, and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson.