Robert Louis Stevenson: Life, Literature and the Silver Screen

Robert Louis Stevenson's cinematic legacy is studied in-depth here, with a look at his life and his body of work. From The Sire De Maletroit's Door (1877) to St. Ives (1896), each adapted story and all relevant film versions are examined, including exhaustive analyses of the 1931 adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the 1945 version of The Body Snatcher. A discussion of the process of adapting literature for the movies, demonstrating how Stevenson's stories have been misrepresented for more than 80 years, is also provided.