‘To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life’

(Robert Louis Stevenson, Weir of Hermiston (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896), p. 25.)

FURTHER STUDIES

Critical studies of Robert Louis Stevenson is an ongoing scholarly resource, offering up-to-date, rigorous bibliographies on Robert Louis Stevenson. Professor Richard Dury of the University of Bergamo began this endeavour in December of 1996.

Also see the “in the footsteps of RLS” bibliography – a list of works about Stevenson topography and revisiting places associated with Stevenson. For example, you can find books about following the route RLS took in Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879). You can also find books about following the fictional route his character David Balfour followed in Kidnapped (1886).

Another relevant page on the site is the catalogue of photos of RLS (detailing the year the photo was taken, a brief description of the photo, and where the photo is held – for example, the Writers’ Museum [The Edinburgh Museums Service], or the Beinecke Library, Yale). See also the audio-video Documentaries listing (including both studies of RLS’s life and of his works).

This section will be particularly helpful for those researching Stevenson and his writing. Here you will find a list of Critical Writing on RLS, complete with a brief summary for each entry. You will also find a list of Online Studies of Stevenson and his work. Finally, you will find information about Stevenson’s Critical Reception, from his own lifetime to the present, including other writers’ opinions about RLS.

Critical Studies of RLS
Images courtesy of The Writer’s Museum

You may also be interested in the Journal of Stevenson Studies