R L Stevenson on Fiction

This anthology brings together Robert Louis Stevenson's essays on fiction, which had been scattered throughout editions of his collected works. Essays such as "A Humble Remonstrance", "A Gossip on Romance", "Books which have Influenced Me", "A Chapter on Dreams", and "Popular Authors" reveal Stevenson's fascination with the process of creativity and the imagination, interventions in contemporary debates over realism, exploration of literary hierarchies, theories of narrative desire, and the pleasures and influences he derived from his own reading. This illuminating insight to the thoughts on the craft of writing from one of Scotland's most famous literary figures includes an introduction by Glenda Norquay discussing Stevenson's essay writing.

Glenda Norquay is Professor of Scottish Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. Her books include a monograph on Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading, the edited collection Across the Margins (with Gerry Smyth), and a number of essays and articles on Scottish women writers and on Stevenson. She edited The Collected Works of Lorna Moon, and two collections of women's suffrage fiction and is currently editing St Ives for the New Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson.