Publication Order of David Balfour Books
| Kidnapped | 1886 |
| Catriona / David Balfour | 1893 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Treasure Island | 1883 |
| Prince Otto | 1885 |
| Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | 1886 |
| The Black Arrow | 1888 |
| The Master of Ballantrae | 1889 |
| The Wrong Box (With: Lloyd Osbourne) | 1889 |
| The Wrecker (With: Lloyd Osbourne) | 1892 |
| The Ebb-Tide (With: Lloyd Osbourne) | 1894 |
| Weir of Hermiston | 1896 |
| St Ives | 1897 |
| The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth | 2014 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| New Arabian Nights | 1882 |
| More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (With: Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson) | 1885 |
| The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables | 1887 |
| Island Nights’ Entertainments | 1893 |
| Fables | 1896 |
| Tales and Fantasies | 1905 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| Moral Emblems | 1882 |
| A Child’s Garden of Verses | 1885 |
| Underwoods | 1887 |
| Ballads | 1891 |
| Songs of Travel and Other Verses | 1896 |
Publication Order of Plays
| Three Plays (With: William Ernest Henley) | 1892 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| An Inland Voyage | 1878 |
| Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes | 1878 |
| Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes | 1879 |
| Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers | 1881 |
| Familiar Studies of Men and Books | 1882 |
| The Silverado Squatters | 1883 |
| Memories and Portraits | 1887 |
| Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin | 1888 |
| Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu | 1890 |
| Across the Plains | 1892 |
| A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa | 1892 |
| The Amateur Emigrant | 1895 |
| Vailima Letters | 1895 |
| In the South Seas | 1896 |
| Essays in the Art of Writing | 1905 |
| Essays of Travel | 1905 |
| Lay Morals and Other Papers | 1911 |
About Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (13 November 1850 to 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels “Treasure Island” (1883), “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” (1886) and “Kidnapped” (1886), and for the poetry collection “A Child’s Garden of Verses” (1885).
Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but travelled widely in spite of it. His first books were travel accounts: “An Inland Voyage” (1878) describes a canoe trip from Antwerp to Pontoise, and “Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes” (1879) a solo walk through the mountains of south-central France. In 1876 he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American, at Grez-sur-Loing. He followed her to California in 1879 and they married in May 1880, spending their honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp in Napa Valley, which he wrote about in “The Silverado Squatters”.
In 1884 the Stevensons settled in Bournemouth, and it was there that he wrote the bulk of his most popular work. “Treasure Island”, a tale of piracy and buried treasure, was his first major success. “Kidnapped” is a historical novel about the boy David Balfour, his pursuit of his inheritance and his alliance with Alan Breck Stewart during the Jacobite troubles in Scotland. Its sequel, “Catriona” (1893), was also published as “David Balfour”.
After his father died in 1887 Stevenson left for the United States, and in June 1888 he chartered the yacht Casco and sailed from San Francisco into the Pacific. He settled in Samoa in 1890. His writing there turned towards a darker realism in works such as “The Beach of Falesá” and “The Ebb-Tide” (1894), the latter one of three novels he wrote with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, along with “The Wrong Box” and “The Wrecker”.
Stevenson died at his home in Vailima on 3 December 1894, aged 44, and was buried on Mount Vaea. He left two novels unfinished: “Weir of Hermiston” was published in 1896, and “St Ives”, completed by Arthur Quiller-Couch, in 1897. “Treasure Island” has been filmed frequently, “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” has been much adapted in plays and films, and “The Wrong Box” was filmed in 1966 with John Mills, Ralph Richardson and Michael Caine.
Photo: Henry Walter Barnett, 1893 (State Library of New South Wales), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).