Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) gave the world Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but for the fantastic his key work is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), a chemical transformation of self that became a permanent myth of the divided human and a template for the ‘mad science’ story. His tales of the uncanny, like ‘The Body Snatcher’, and his gift for adventure resonate throughout imaginative fiction.