Mr. Henry James on Genius

Speaking of the quarrel between Alan Breck and David Balfour in Kidnapped, he declares that he knows of "few better examples of the way genius has ever a surprise in its pocket — keeps an ace, as it were, up its sleeve."

Weir of Hermiston: A Stevenson Surprise

And in Weir of Hermiston we have a surprise of an even higher order from Stevenson’s pocket; that pocket which during his lifetime seemed like the proverbial small boy’s—almost inexhaustible, stuffed full of a delightfully heterogeneous mass, sometimes of jingling trinkets, and sometimes of the oddest and rarest treasures.

It may seem rash to declare a half-finished and half-revised book the greatest achievement of an author who had so high a passion for finality as Stevenson, but many will unhesitatingly declare Weir of Hermiston Stevenson’s best book.