sologdin

The text itself is a work of art of the highest order, but this is one of the weakest Norton Criticals--very thin, light on interpretive essays and contextual materials, but including a relatively large proportion of items about the narrative in theatre & cinema--which has some intrinsic interest as well as being useful data for a reception aesthetics, but which should not have been placed herein if they were forced to limit the volume to 210 pages (compare, however, the Norton Critical *Heart of Darkness*, a text of similar length, but housed in a 500+ pages volume).

The supplemental materials provided (literary & scientific contextual readings as well as five professional essays) are decent enough. Much of it takes Stevenson's silly theological insistences too seriously--as if "good" and "evil" were somehow significant outside of mythology--but here much of the debate has focused on same, and whereas the text offers superior fare for hermeneutical appetites.

Definitely a necessary classic of Victorian literature and one part of the foundational core of speculative fiction.