Editing Robert Louis Stevenson (section)

==Artistic reception==
[[File:Picture of Stevenson by Barrie.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait by [[Henry Walter Barnett]] in 1893, sent by Stevenson to [[J. M. Barrie]]]]

Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of ''[[Treasure Island]]'', ''[[The Black Arrow]]'' and ''[[The Master of Ballantrae]]''. His heirs sold his papers during World War I, and many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918.<ref>{{Cite news |date=9 July 2010 |title=Bid to trace lost Robert Louis Stevenson manuscripts |work=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10569471 |access-date=8 June 2015 |archive-date=25 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925134702/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10569471 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, being admired by many other writers, including [[Marcel Proust]], [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], [[Henry James]], [[J. M. Barrie]],<ref name="Chaney">{{Cite book |last=Chaney |first=Lisa |title=Hide-and-seek with Angels: The Life of J. M. Barrie |publisher=Arrow Books |year=2006 |isbn=0-09-945323-1 |location=London}}</ref> [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Emilio Salgari]], and later [[Cesare Pavese]], [[Bertolt Brecht]], [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Jack London]], [[Vladimir Nabokov]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dillard |first=R. H. W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3f2ne_bk-xoC&pg=PR13 |title=Introduction to Treasure Island |publisher=Signet Classics |year=1998 |isbn=0-451-52704-6 |location=New York |page=xiii |author-link=R. H. W. Dillard |no-pp=true}}</ref> and [[G. K. Chesterton]], who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing [[spillikins]]."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chesterton |first=Gilbert Keith |url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Age_in_Literature/Chapter_IV |title=The Victorian Age in Literature |publisher=Henry Holt and Co. |year=1913 |location=London |page=246 |author-link=G. K. Chesterton |access-date=28 July 2008 |archive-date=29 June 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080629105004/http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Age_in_Literature/Chapter_IV |url-status=live }}</ref>

Stevenson was seen for much of the 20th century as a second-class writer. He became relegated to children's literature and horror genres,<ref name="arata" /> condemned by literary figures such as [[Virginia Woolf]] (daughter of his early mentor [[Leslie Stephen]]) and her husband [[Leonard Woolf]], and he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools.<ref name="arata" /> His exclusion reached its nadir in the 1973 2,000-page ''Oxford Anthology of English Literature'' where he was entirely unmentioned, and ''[[The Norton Anthology of English Literature]]'' excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (1st–7th editions), including him only in the eighth edition (2006).<ref name=arata/>

[[File:Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait in 1893 by Barnett]]
The late 20th century brought a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial [[history of the Pacific Islands]] and a humanist.<ref name=arata/> He was praised by [[Roger Lancelyn Green]], one of the Oxford [[Inklings]], as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a pioneer of the Age of the Story Tellers along with [[H. Rider Haggard]].<ref>introduction to 1965 [[Everyman's Library]] edition of the one-volume ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]'' and ''[[Rupert of Hentzau]]''</ref> He is now evaluated as a peer of authors such as [[Joseph Conrad]] (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction) and [[Henry James]], with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted to him.<ref name="arata">Stephen Arata (2006). "Robert Louis Stevenson". David Scott Kastan (ed.). ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature''. Vol. 5: 99–102</ref> Throughout the vicissitudes of his scholarly reception, Stevenson has remained popular worldwide. According to the [[Index Translationum]], Stevenson is ranked the 26th-most-translated author in the world, ahead of [[Oscar Wilde]] and [[Edgar Allan Poe]].<ref name="indextrans">{{Cite web |title=Top 50 Authors |url=http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatexp.aspx?crit1L=5&nTyp=min&topN=50 |access-date=17 January 2019 |website=Index Translationum |publisher=United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |archive-date=12 June 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140612072938/http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatexp.aspx?crit1L=5&nTyp=min&topN=50 |url-status=live }}</ref>

On the subject of Stevenson's modern reputation, American film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote in 1996,

{{blockquote|I was talking to a friend the other day who said he'd never met a child who liked reading Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Treasure Island''.

Neither have I, I said. And he'd never met a child who liked reading Stevenson's ''Kidnapped''. Me neither, I said. My early exposure to both books was via the [[Classics Illustrated]] comic books. But I did read the books later, when I was no longer a kid, and I enjoyed them enormously. Same goes for Stevenson's ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde''.

The fact is, Stevenson is a splendid writer of stories for adults, and he should be put on the same shelf with [[Joseph Conrad]] and [[Jack London]] instead of in between [[Winnie the Pooh]] and [[Peter Pan]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=1996-02-16 |title=Muppet Treasure Island |work=[[Chicago Sun Times]] |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/muppet-treasure-island-1996 |access-date=2019-05-07 |archive-date=25 January 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190125073540/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/muppet-treasure-island-1996 |url-status=live }}</ref>}}