This book contains six early stories, including ‘The Pavilion on the Links’, praised as a masterpiece by Arthur Conan Doyle, and ‘A Lodging for the Night’, which came out at the top of the list when The New York Times asked twenty-four writers to name the best short story in English in 1914. The edition presents critical texts of the stories, a list of emendations and a textual essay; ‘The Pavilion on the Links’ appears in both the book version and the magazine version, which differ considerably. The edition also includes an introduction focusing on the genesis and the reception of the stories, exhaustive explanatory annotation and several appendices, including a transcription of the handwritten notes made by Stevenson’s literary mentors on the manuscript of the early story ‘When the Devil Was Well’.
