The hunt for lost Stevenson treasures

X, UNFORTUNATELY, does not mark the spot but a global treasure hunt is to be launched for the priceless lost manuscripts of Robert Louis Stevenson.

The original handwritten copies of some of the Scottish author's greatest works are believed to be in the hands of obscure libraries or private collectors after they were sold off at the beginning of the 20th century.

Now a group of Stevenson experts are determined to track down the hidden manuscripts as part of plans to produce a definitive guide to the author's prolific literary output.

At least 100 of the works remain untraced, including classics such as Treasure Island, The Black Arrow and The Master of Ballantrae. The search will be launched at a conference next week at Stirling University, where academics will meet for the "Locating Stevenson" project.

The Stevenson group has been encouraged by the recent rediscovery of an unpublished article he wrote early in his career, which had been missing for almost a century. The manuscript for "How Books Have to Be Written", an article Stevenson contributed to a boys' magazine, surfaced in the archive of Syracuse University in the United States.

Leading the search is Richard Dury, the series editor of a new Collected Works of Stevenson. He explained: "In the database of Stevenson's prose works prepared for the edition, about half are without any manuscript. Some of these missing manuscripts have surfaced in sales, only to disappear again but we're determined to track down as many as possible and are keen for libraries and collectors around the world to check their archives and get in touch."

Today authors with one eye on posterity and the other on their bank balance frequently sell their letters and manuscripts to a university, ensuring they remain intact as valuable assets for future scholars.

However, when Stevenson died in 1894, his archive, or what remained of it, was passed on to his wife, Fanny Osbourne. Upon her death, Isobel, her daughter and Stevenson's stepdaughter, sold it at two auctions at New York's Anderson Galleries in 1914 and 1915. The two catalogues for the sales list included 200 original manuscripts and hundreds of books from his personal and extensive library.

The manuscripts ranged from his earliest childhood, such as three pages of bible verses, written at the age of six in what the catalogue described as "crude printed letters" to later essays.

Other manuscripts were sold at later sales. As Dury explained, these include the essays "Virginibus Puerisque" and "On Falling in Love", sold in a British Red Cross fund-raising sale in 1918 but unheard of since. They also included a companion essay to "How Books Have to be Written", "On the Value of Books and Reading", sold in 1914; and Stevenson's journal written as a law clerk in Edinburgh, which was sold in 1924.

Dury said: "These works are probably still in private collections, but they may also be in some library with the fact not so far uncovered by scholars. It is unlikely that we will ever find manuscripts to major works that have never been reported in sales catalogues."

For literary scholars an author's manuscript is as close as they can reach to reading their mind. "It takes us as close as we can get to the moment of creation," said Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday's literary editor and the author of The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read. Kelly, who is giving an address at the beginning of the conference, said: "The original manuscript shows us the process of writing, what was scored out and changed and even who else changed it. If these missing manuscripts were found then they would sell handsomely."

The organisers hope that by raising the profile of Stevenson's manuscripts, collectors and libraries will contact them with details of the works that remain unaccounted for. They are also attempting to reconstruct Stevenson's extensive library, which included works on Scottish history, French history, military history and books on the Pacific, in order to transcribe the notes he frequently made in the margins.

The Locating Stevenson conference has drawn Stevenson fans from around the world, including delegates from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, China and Japan.

Dr Scott Hames, the organiser, said: "This reflects the revival of critical interest in Stevenson. While Stevenson's fiction was for much of the 20th century unjustly dismissed as "adventure stories for boys" he was revered by modern writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino."

The university is highlighting the fact that as a youth the writer was a frequent visitor. His grandfather, Robert Stevenson, was a civil engineer who worked on the construction of Bridge of Allan in its heyday as a spa, and young Robert Louis often came to the town for holidays. These visits are said to have left their imprint on his imagination. The cave on Allan Water is thought to be the model for Ben Gunn's Cave in Treasure Island.