*APPROVED* This fully-annotated scholarly edition explores the detailed evolution of the work through its composition and on to eventual posthumous publication This fully-annotated scholarly edition explores the detailed evolution of Weir of Hermiston through its composition and on to eventual posthumous publication. Stevenson's unfinished masterpiece has been entirely re-edited from his final manuscript, revealing a rather different novel from the bowdlerised version produced posthumously by his friends. Stevenson revisits the conflicted Scotland of James Hogg and Sir Walter Scott as well as that of his own youth, but also responds to recently published novels. A substantial essay explores the complex early publication history of the novel on both sides of the Atlantic, and exceptionally full explanatory notes and other background information are provided. Key Features - Composition history drawing on draft manuscript material in various US archives - Detailed account of early publication history in UK and USA - Details of early reception in UK and USA - Full Explanatory Notes including citations from draft manuscript material - Historical and Geographical Note - Glossary - Appendix containing Colvin's Editorial Note Gillian Hughes is Advisory Editor to The New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. She has edited or co-edited many volumes in the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg (of which she was formerly a General Editor). Her current editorial projects include (with P. D. Garside) a volume of the Shorter Verse of Sir Walter Scott. [back flap] Robert Louis Stevenson is recognised as one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century, covering an extraordinary breadth of genres, among them stories, essays, travel writing, the historical romance and the modern novel. This new, ground-breaking complete edition allows readers to understand for the first time the development of Stevenson's work, his collaborations, his relations with publishers and his place in the literary history of his period. Disentangling Stevenson's writing from the changes made by his first editor, Sidney Colvin, the New Edinburgh Edition provides readers with completely fresh, authoritative texts of his entire body of works for the first time in over a hundred years. Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850 and after a life of constant movement round the world died in Samoa in 1894. His work is remarkable for its close attention to prose style and for its constant experimentation in a variety of literary forms.