Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad are two very differentwriters. Stevenson found an ever-increasing audience with his poetryand early travelogues, as well as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of DrJekyll and Mr Hyde and his Scottish romances. Conrad first led a lifeat sea and began his writing career with tales and novels set in the FarEast, Africa, South America and later, in Europe. But these two writersalso had a lot in common. Their experiences with the British empire,exile and the exotic differed, but their assessments of these experiencesdemonstrate an astonishing amount of...