Throughout the chronicle of illness, adventures, and all kinds of play, have been scattered the names of books, and with them implicit reference to quite another life, ceaselessly carried on in the midst of most various activities, the life of a writer, an obstinate determined struggle with intangible difficulties, most of them not to be perceived even by those who were most often with him. It is the business of the rest of this book to consider that other intricate life, and to follow its progress, to observe a series of adventures on a plane quite different from that on which its hero played the penny whistle, loved, learnt the ways of boats, and weeded in a Samoan plantation.

Although Stevenson wrote essays even at the end of his life, and Scottish stories at the beginning, yet it is not only convenient but essentially just to discuss each one of the many facets of his art in an order almost chronological, following generally the times when each of these facets was so brightly illuminated as to leave the rest at least in partial shadow. My plan1 is, to begin with an analysis of Stevenson's attitude towards the techniques of literature, and to follow it with chapters on his essays, criticism, short stories, boy's books and Prince Otto, poems, fables, the Scotch novels, the South Seas, collaborations, and unfinished work, ending with a summary of his character and achievements.