Robert Louis Stevenson and Popular Culture

Within the traditional canon of English Literature Robert Louis Stevenson‘s position has oscillated between that of celebrated man of letters and popular writer of boys‘ adventure fiction. In his lifetime he was highly regarded as an essayist of considerable talent, a man who was seen as an equal to Henry James and whose literary reputation was jealously guarded by friends like W. E. Henley and Sidney Colvin. In the twentieth century, however, this reputation became subordinated to his popularity as the writer of the best sellers Treasure Island (1883) and Jekyll and Hyde (1886). In the last fifteen or so years, however, Stevenson has begun to receive more serious academic attention, with his later novels and stories being recognised as contributing to genres beyond the adventure romance. It has thus become a pressing task to reassess Stevenson‘s place within the literature of the last two hundred years because this allows us to recognise the range of genres that influenced his fiction, and how, in turn, his work influenced future generations of writers. This essay will thus explore how Stevenson‘s work endures through re-tellings, re-imaginings and adaptations in contemporary popular culture. Recent works like Stevenson and Conrad: Writers of Transition seek to reposition Stevenson alongside his near contemporaries, and argue that he was a writer who deserves more serious attention. 1 Such works recognise the proximity between Stevenson and Joseph Conrad, acknowledging the debt that Conrad owed to the earlier writer, and allowing Stevenson to take a deserved place alongside the celebrated writers of the late nineteenth-century. Frederic Jameson claims that Conrad ―floats uncertainly somewhere between Proust and Robert Louis Stevenson‖ (Jameson 1981: 206), a claim that elevates Conrad and