Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), celebrated author of Treasure Island  (1882-3), Kidnapped (1886), and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886), was a lifelong connoisseur of "penny dreadfuls," or illustrated serial fiction that targeted working-class readers. In his childhood, his nurse Alison Cunningham often read penny fiction to him. In adulthood, he was haunted by one penny title in particular: A Mystery in Scarlet, by “Malcolm J.