Robert Louis Stevenson and The Master of Ballantrae (1889)

Abstract

The following pages discuss nine novels that illustrate the kinds of liberty that Stevenson allowed himself and other novelists as they undertook the writing of historical romances. For all of them, the changing marketplace had rendered many of Sir Walter Scott’s dicta unusable. My extended consideration of their literary merits (and occasionally their literary failings) is not a simple defence of the rightness of the enthusiastic responses of their readers, though it seems necessary to stress, from the beginning, the fact that all these novels were commercially successful. At any rate, I do not want to dwell on the shabbiness of reviewing standards which refused to acknowledge the degree of success achieved by authors who knew what they were about, who aimed to please their readers with modest but well-crafted narratives, and who worked hard at their craft.