ABSTRACT
In the course of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote approximately 2,800 letters. Reading through this massive collection, one learns that Stevenson was not only a devoted correspondent who daily composed letters but also a writer conscious of the letter as a physical object. Stevenson's nomadic life contributed to his regard for letter writing. In particular, the material presence of the letter contributes to the structure and metaphoric content of three novels written by Stevenson in the late 1880s and early 1890s: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Master of Ballantrae, and The Ebb-Tide: A Trio and Quartette. In addition to helping to construct the scaffolding of these novels, the author proposes that these letters convey an increasingly unromantic and negative view of humanity. The way a letter is written, in a sense, measures the state of affairs and the deterioration of the novels' protagonists.
