Preface by the General Editor

s works have continued to find a global audience.His novels, poems, short stories, travel books, essays, criticism, journalism and letters have given countless readers many hours of entertainment and intellectual engagement.Yet the perception of Stevenson as a popular author has often obscured his contribution to world literature.Too often, Stevenson has been dismissed as simply a writer of stories and verses for children when in fact he was one of the most innovative writers of the late nineteenth century.His ideas on literature, language and their social relations are set out in a number of essays which chart his understanding of both the technicalities of his craft and the cultural currents of his day.While many of Stevenson's works have remained in print, it has become increasingly apparent that these works are corrupted texts which impair the reader's full appreciation of the writer.The purpose of the Centenary Edition is to remedy this situation by producing the first authoritative editions of Stevenson's works.The new editions return to Stevenson's manuscripts, proofs and related materials to examine what the author actually wrote; they will correct long-standing errors and, on occasion, introduce material which Stevenson intended to include but which, for various reasons, was omitted from first editions.In accuracy, authority and authenticity the Centenary Edition improves on all previous editions of Stevenson's works.No one understood better than Stevenson himself that a literary work does not exist in a cultural vacuum.His comments on copyright, censorship, commercial forces, printing innovations and relations between publishers and authors indicate that he was all too familiar with how such factors could affect the writing and reception of a work.Where appropriate, some account of these factors and their effects will be given so that the reader will have a sense of Stevenson's literary milieu and cultural constituency.The new editions are clear texts, free from any editorial signals.An editorial commentary and explanatory notes accompany each edition and are designed to enhance the reader's understanding of the various stages of the work from its conception in Stevenson's mind (as recorded in his letters, notes and drafts) through to its production in manuscript and printed form, and on to the work's critical and public reception.Stevenson began writing as a child in Edinburgh and his first literary efforts were about the domestic and the local.From his birthplace, he travelled to many familiar and unfamiliar parts of the world and chronicled what he saw in factual and fictional forms.His great strength was that he never reduced the particular to the general, but struggled to articulate human circumstance in all its variety and contradiction.In keeping with the spirit of Stevenson,

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