This is a magnificent biography, None better will be published this year, no better survey of the life of RLS is imaginable, ' ANTHONY BURGESS, OBSERVER Robert Louis Stevenson, the greatest of Scottish novelists, lived a life plagued by hardship. The author of KIDNAPPED, DR JEKELL AND MR HYDE, TREASURE ISLAND, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE AND WEIR OF HERMISTON struggled with his father, his poor health, the prudery of the Victorian reading public and, most of all, the stresses imposed on him by his wife and his stepchildren; stresses which materially contributed to his early death in 1894 at the age of 44. His life is above all a story of courage; not just the bravery needed to face the pacific hurricanes unblinkingly, but the moral strength to wrestle with half a dozen conflicts simultaneously while daily facing possible death from his weak lungs. With his specialist knowledge of Jacobite history and the literature of travel and discovery, Frank McLynn is particularly well suited to write about Stevenson's life and work.