Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad are two very different

writers. Stevenson found an ever-increasing audience with his poetry

and early travelogues, as well as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr

Jekyll and Mr Hyde and his Scottish romances. Conrad first led a life

at sea and began his writing career with tales and novels set in the Far

East, Africa, South America and later, in Europe. But these two writers

also had a lot in common. Their experiences with the British empire,

exile and the exotic differed, but their assessments of these experiences

demonstrate an astonishing amount of convergence.

This collection of essays is the result of a long-term research interest

which aimed at bringing these two authors more closely together in

literary and cultural criticism. In these texts, most of which were separately

published over the past two decades, Stevenson and Conrad's

substantial criticisms of colonial relations are contrasted with their

loves for the sea, its attractions and challenges. The volume also includes

essays on the sea as a cultural space and is rounded off by a

reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which synthesises topics dealt with

earlier concerning the Victorian fin de siècle.