Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a work which shows the influence of James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. It may also have been influenced by Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, with its many case studies of criminal sexuality, published earlier the same year.

The repressed self-destructive relationship and smothered desires of un-nameable danger explored in the book have been argued to be homosexual in nature.

Stevenson was a friend of George Meredith whose book The Egoist he read over and over again. Meredith read me some chapters before it was published and at last I could stand it no longer. I interrupted him, and said, "Now Meredith, own up -- you have drawn Sir Willoughby Patterne from me!" Meredith laughed, and said, "No, no, my dear fellow, I've taken him from all of us, but principally from myself."

Stevenson was also a long-time friend of Henry James whom he met after publishing the article A Humble Remonstrance in response to James' The Art of Fiction.

On the occasion of the critical Matthew Arnold's death Stevenson was heard to remark: Poor Matt. He's gone to Heaven, no doubt -- but he won't like God!

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me.
Here he lies where he longed to be.
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.