<p>Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) left the cobblestone streets of his native Edinburgh and saw what his literary confrère (of a kind) Herman Melville once called “the watery part of the world.” Known for his permanent adventure tales such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Stevenson was also an accomplished poet, and is remembered (and continues to be widely taught) for his lapidary psychological-crime thriller, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The author had the marvelous ability to thread various writing talents into a splendid and satisfying whole: he could summon up a full life with dimensionality and pathos in the span of a single-line observation; he could evoke inner worlds through precise atmospheric configurations and delicate tonal shifts; he could keep a reader rapt with his seemingly effortless instinct for plot and pacing. He voyaged widely in the Pacific Ocean, became famous, wrote tirelessly, and settled finally in Samoa, where he, aged 44, crossed the shining river.</p>
