Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson is best known for the novels Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was also the author of a lesser-known group of fairy tales written late in life, when he was living on Upolu, an island in Samoa. Stevenson specified that these stories should be published as a group, but his literary agent, Sidney Colvin, disobeyed his author’s directive and published two of the fantasy stories in a volume with a third, more naturalistic narrative. Now, 117 years after the author’s death, Bill Gray, a professor at Chichester University, has edited a volume of Stevenson’s fairy tales, which will be published in 2013.

From the Guardian:

Gray, who is also director of the university’s Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy, has campaigned for six years to have Colvin’s decision remedied.

“Stevenson wrote that ‘on no account should these stories appear together’ in his letter to Colvin and he underlined the point,” he said. “Colvin deliberately did exactly what he said he didn’t want and then it was all put down to communications problems.”

“It took weeks, if not months, to get a reply from Samoa because all the post had to come via Australia.”

The new volume will contain the two fantasy stories that Colvin had printed, “The Bottle Imp” and “The Isle of Voices,” along with a third, “The Waif Woman,” that the agent dropped from the collection. According to Gray, “It will be the first time they have been read together as a group, just as Stevenson intended.”