Glenda Norquay

This new Anthology presents a fascinating range of Robert Louis Stevenson's essays on fiction. Better known now for the fiction he wrote himself than for his essays on the subject, this material nevertheless provides an illuminating insight in to the thoughts on the craft of writing from one of Scotland's most famous literary figures. Such writings have hitherto been scattered throughout editions of his collected works; here they are brought together in a new and revealing conjunction. Essays selected include 'A Humble Remonstrance', 'A Gossip on Romance', 'Books which have Influenced Me', 'A Chapter on Dreams' and 'Popular Authors'. They reveal Stevenson's fascination with the process of creativity and the imagination, his interventions in contemporary debates over realism, his exploration of literary hierarchies, his theories of narrative desire, and the pleasures and influences he derived from his own reading. Glenda Norquay introduces this collection with a broad-ranging discussion of Stevenson's essay writing. Each essay is also introduced by a brief preface and the highly specific references within the essays are backed up with explanatory notes, making the Anthology accessible to a wide readership.

This concise biography offers a fresh portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson: frail Edinburgh child turned globe-trotting author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It charts his remarkable literary range – from fiction and poetry to essays and letters – crafted across three continents, often in poor health. Stevenson’s adventurous life and memorable characters captured both popular imagination and critical praise. Drawing on new scholarship, the book explores his role as a literary innovator and cultural commentator, revealing how his work engaged with the anxieties of a rapidly changing world. At once celebrity, critic and colonial observer, Stevenson emerges as a truly modern writer whose influence remains potent today. This is essential reading for lovers of literature, history and global storytelling.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s investigates Stevenson and the geographies of his literary networks during the last years of his life and after his death. It profiles a series of figures who worked with Stevenson, negotiated his publications on both sides of the Atlantic, wrote for him or were inspired by him. Using archival material, correspondence, fiction and biographies it moves across these literary networks. It deploys the concept of ‘literary prosthetics’ to frame its analysis of gatekeepers, tastemakers, agents, collaborators and authorial surrogates in the transatlantic production of Stevenson’s writing. Case studies of understudied individuals and broader consideration of the networks they represent contribute to knowledge of transatlantic publishing in the 1890s, understanding of transatlantic culture, Stevenson studies, current interest in the workings of literary communities and in nineteenth-century mobility.

Robert Louis Stevenson and theories of reading is both an exceptionally well researched study of the novelist, and well as an intriguing exploration of 'literary consumption'. Glenda Norquay presents fresh interpretations of Stevenson’s literary essays, of major works including The Master of Ballantrae, and some of his more neglected fiction such as St Ives and The Wrecker, as well as illuminating our understanding of his role within debates over popular fiction, romance and reading pleasure. She offers an unusual combination of literary history and reception theory and argues that Stevenson both exemplified tensions within the literary market of his time and anticipated later developments in reading theory. By combining the study of nineteenth-century cultural politics with detailed analysis of his Scottish Calvinism, Stevenson is reassessed as both a Victorian and Scottish writer. The book is aimed at scholars, postgraduates and undergraduates with an interest in the nineteenth-century literary marketplace, in Scottish culture, and in reading /reception theory as well as Stevenson enthusiasts.

Women's Suffrage Literature is a new Major Work from Routledge and Edition Synapse. It makes available in facsimile key texts which represent the wealth of creative writing that emerged around the issue of women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century. The collection includes five significant novels, a wide range of drama and representative short stories. Selected in order to illustrate the diversity of concerns and positions with the campaign for women's suffrage, the texts also reflect the different literary models adopted. They cover a range of key moments within and after the campaign for the vote, revealing changes in perspective and tactics between 1907 and 1924. The selected texts problematize categories such as pro- and anti-suffrage writing, reveal the complex relationship between definitions of a 'feminist' and a 'suffrage' text and raise questions about critical approaches to such politicized writings. The collection is organized so as to provide some historical coverage of this key period; to allow comparative analysis of different genres; and to demonstrate the variety of concerns and discourses which defined this campaign. It has been edited by a team of academics with long experience of researching and teaching in the field of women's suffrage.