Journal of Stevenson Studies Volume 8 Stevenson8.indb 1 01/10/2011 16:04 ii Journal of Stevenson Studies Stevenson8.indb 2 01/10/2011 16:04 Journal of Stevenson Studies iii Editors Professor Linda Dryden Professor Emeritus Centre for Literature and Roderick Watson Writing English Studies School of Arts and Creative University of Stirling Industries Stirling Napier University FK9 4LA Craighouse Scotland Edinburgh Tel: 01786 467500 EH10 5LG Email: [email protected] Scotland Tel: 0131 455 6128 Email: [email protected] Contributions to volume 10 are warmly invited and should be sent to either of the editors listed above. The text should be submitted in MS WORD files in MHRA format. All contributions are subject to review by members of the Editorial Board. Published by The Centre for Scottish Studies University of Stirling © The contributors 2011 ISSN: 1744-3857 Printed and bound in the UK by Antony Rowe Ltd. Chippenhan, Wiltshire. Stevenson8.indb 3 01/10/2011 16:04 iv Journal of Stevenson Studies Editorial Board Professor Richard Ambrosini Professor Gordon Hirsch Universita’ di Roma Tre Department of English Rome University of Minnesota Professor Stephen Arata Professor Katherine Linehan School of English Department of English University of Virginia Oberlin College Dr Hilary Beattie Ohio Department of Psychiatry Professor Barry Menikoff Columbia University Department of English Professor Oliver Buckton University of Hawaii at School of English Manoa Florida Atlantic University Professor Glenda Norquay Dr Jenni Calder Department of English and National Museum of Scotland Cultural History Liverpool John Moores Professor Linda Dryden University School of Arts and Creative Industries Professor Marshall Walker Edinburgh Napier University Department of English The University of Waikato Professor Richard Dury University of Bergamo Professor Roderick Watson (Consultant Editor) Department of English Studies Dr Penny Fielding University of Stirling Department of English University of Edinburgh Stevenson8.indb 4 01/10/2011 16:04 Journal of Stevenson Studies v Contents Editorial .................................................................................... 1 James Robertson A reliable author and his unreliable critics: the fall and rise of Stevenson’s literary reputation.........................................5 Lesley Graham ‘Selfless’: the shifting reputation of Alison Cunningham in biographies of Robert Louis Stevenson ................................. 17 Stuart Kelly Plot, narrative and artifice: Walter Scott to Thomas Pynchon via RLS ..................................................................... 31 Saverio Tomaiuolo The strange case of Weir of Hermiston and St. Ives: R. L. Stevenson’s last adventures in narration ......................49 Donald Mackenzie Stevenson after Scott: the case of Catriona ............................69 Gordon Hirsch Locating RLS in relation to Brander Matthews’s and Walter Besant’s theories of literary collaboration in the production of popular fiction ....................................................................97 Roderick Watson ‘Ginger beer and earthquakes’ –Stevenson and the terrors of contingency ..........................................................108 Robert Louis Abrahamson ‘Of all men the most clubbable’? RLS at the Savile Club and the Cornhill Magazine .................................................. 125 Sarah Ames ‘The Suicide Club’: afterlives ................................................ 143 Jenni Calder Stevenson in the wilderness: California, Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae ..................................................... 166 Stevenson8.indb 5 01/10/2011 16:04 vi Journal of Stevenson Studies Nathalie Jaëck Stevenson’s literary utopia ...................................................182 Hilary J. Beattie Stevenson’s mirrored images or, games of Hyde and seek.. 197 David Miller ‘In some shut convent place’: the question of Stevenson’s poetry ................................................................ 214 Ann C. Colley Locating home ......................................................................234 Richard J. Hill Illustrating Island Nights’ Entertainments: the problem of exotic authenticity ............................................................245 Sara Stevenson Seeing in Time. Visual engagement in Stevenson’s idea of Edinburgh ........................................................................264 Reviews ..............................................................................286 Contributors ......................................................................297 JSS Notes ............................................................................301 Stevenson8.indb 6 01/10/2011 16:04 Journal of Stevenson Studies 1 Editorial This issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies contains essays that have been selected and developed from papers presented at the Stirling conference ‘RLS 2010: Locating Stevenson’. Organised by Scott Hames, this event returned the Stevenson academic community to the University of Stirling, for it was there, in the year 2000, that the first of all our subsequent bien- nial conferences took place. Dr Eric Massie, then a postgraduate at the university, initiated that first event and went on to produce the first issue of the Journal of Stevenson Studies. In the ten years since then, under the editorship of Rory Watson and Linda Dryden, we hope that this Journal has been a significant critical resource in the growing field of Stevenson studies. The theme of the 2010 conference was ‘Locating Stevenson’ and responses to this topic were many and various. The present volume can offer only some of the work presented over three very busy days, but other papers have been earmarked for later publication. We have tried to group the essays in this volume in broadly thematic sets so that their associated topics might seem to follow from and comment on each other, and each set lead on to the next. James Robertson, one of Scotland’s leading novel- ists, opens with his plenary lecture, reflecting on the rise and fall of Stevenson’s reputation, while Leslie Graham’s essay tracks how ‘Cummie’ has been represented in numerous biographies of her young charge. Both papers demonstrate the shifting ter- rain of literary and biographical judgement. The contributions from Stuart Kelly (who gave the other plenary lecture), Saverio Tomaiuolo, Donald Mackenzie and Gordon Hirsch, take us into acts of critical location, or rather re-location, for all four offer fresh contexts or insights into Stevenson’s production of popu- lar fiction and how he managed and thought about his art. The essays from Roderick Watson, Robert-Louis Abrahamson, and Sarah Ames all deal with elements to be found in Stevenson’s Stevenson8.indb 1 01/10/2011 16:04 2 Journal of Stevenson Studies essay writing or short fiction, looking at his sometimes disturb- ing propensity for mixing darkness with what at least seems to be frivolity. Jenni Calder’s essay touches on similar darknesses, when she reflects on the role of the ‘wilderness’ in both his life and fiction. The essays from Nathalie Jaëck, Hilary Beattie and David Miller relocate Stevenson’s literary achievement from their different and strongly theoretical perspectives. Ann Colley returns us to questions of literal location in her account of how Stevenson slowly became ‘at home’ in the Pacific, while Richard Hill reflects on the relationship between Stevenson’s ‘Island’ texts and the illustrations used to support them in early publica- tions. Sara Stevenson continues the visual theme with an essay speculating on Stevenson’s observation of aspects of Edinburgh in the context of Hill and Adamson, pioneer photographers of that fascinating city. These essays testify to the diversity and breadth of Stevenson Studies today, and the point is made again if one looks at the institutions and home countries of the 2010 conference delegates, with representatives from the Basque Country, Canada, England, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Scotland, Spain, Taiwan and the United States. It seems fitting, then, that Stevenson’s Pacific experience should be reflected in the location of the next international conference, which is to be held in Australia at the University of South Wales in 2013, before returning to the United States to be hosted at the University of Virginia in 2015. In keeping with this ever expanding field of interest, the New Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, under the general editorship of Stephen Arata, Richard Dury and Penny Fielding, is gathering pace and will soon produce new critical editions that will be absolutely invalu- able to scholars and informed readers alike. A brief report on the edition’s progress can be found at the end of this volume, and of course Richard Dury’s long standing work on the online RLS Stevenson8.indb 2 01/10/2011 16:04 Journal of Stevenson Studies 3 Newsletter (now in its 11th year) continues to offer an informed and indispensible review of new academic publications, lectures, seminars, conferences, biographical studies, theatre adaptations, recent editions, iconography, translations and every sort of refer- ence to Stevenson in both academic circles and the general media. If you are not on his email list, this remarkable resource, and its archive, can be accessed at http://www.robert-louis-stevenson. org/newsletter. The power of electronic dissemination is evidenced again by the fact that the RLS Website