The Dynamiter

There are many Victorian novels that concern themselves with courtship, inheritance, moral improvement and the careful arrangement of social embarrassment. The Dynamiter chooses, with admirable lack of decorum, to concern itself instead with explosions, conspiracies, restless eccentrics and the sort of people who seem incapable of entering a room without bringing chaos in with them. Co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, and here appearing in a 1997 Sutton Publishing edition, it is one of those gloriously odd books that remind you the nineteenth century was not all drawing rooms and deathbed speeches. Sometimes it was also bomb plots and general instability.

Originally published in the 1880s, The Dynamiter emerged from that wonderfully combustible era when political violence, urban unease and sensational fiction could all be blended into something at once thrilling, absurd and unexpectedly funny. Stevenson, best known for rather more respectable fixtures of the canon such as Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, here allows himself to wander into stranger territory: part satire, part adventure, part parody of contemporary alarm, and altogether less tidy than the monuments of literary posterity might lead one to expect. This is Stevenson with his cravat slightly askew and a mischievous glint in his eye.

And what a premise. The very word “dynamiter” has a marvellous old-world melodrama about it, as if danger ought to arrive in a top hat with dubious intentions and a suspiciously ticking parcel. The late Victorian imagination was deeply susceptible to such figures, and this novel clearly takes great pleasure in playing with that fear. Yet the result is not a grim political tract or a dour exercise in terror, but something far more entertainingly unstable: a novel alive with shifting tones, improbable characters and the delightful suspicion that nobody involved is entirely as serious as they would like to appear.

That is perhaps the real charm of The Dynamiter. It belongs to that rich literary tradition in which high drama and gentle mockery co-exist, each slightly undermining the other. One can feel the genuine anxieties of the period—about anarchism, modern violence, and the unnerving possibilities of the city—while also sensing that Stevenson has little intention of letting his material become solemn. The conspirators may be alarming, but they are also faintly ridiculous. The plot may gesture toward catastrophe, but it does so in a manner that remains sprightly, ironic and very nearly amused by its own audacity.

As a book, it also offers the pleasures of a less familiar Stevenson. There is always something appealing about discovering that a canonical author had corners, detours and side roads; that alongside the masterpieces everyone knows, there are stranger specimens full of experiment, wit and unclassifiable energy. The Dynamiter is exactly that sort of find: the literary equivalent of opening a side door in a grand old house and discovering a room full of fireworks, disguises and people talking much too quickly. It may not be the first Stevenson most readers encounter, but it is certainly one of the more memorable once found.

As an As New copy sold by Crappy Old Books, this edition arrives in deliciously crisp contradiction to its contents. A novel full of disorder, agitation and explosive potential presented in immaculate condition feels almost too civilised, as though the book has been carefully pressed, brushed and instructed to behave itself before being allowed onto the shelf. There are no obvious scars of adventure here, no foxing, no weary signs of hard travel—just a handsome, fresh-looking volume waiting to unleash its Victorian mayhem on some unsuspecting modern reader.

Sutton Publishing was always good at producing editions that gave neglected corners of literary history a second life, and this one feels exactly suited to that mission. It is the sort of book that flatters the buyer twice over: first by being an interesting Stevenson that not everyone has read, and second by suggesting that one’s taste extends beyond the obvious. It says, in effect, yes, you know Treasure Island—but have you tried the one with anarchists, absurdity and a pronounced taste for havoc?

In the end, The Dynamiter is a wonderfully eccentric artefact of late Victorian fiction: part thriller, part send-up, part social unease in narrative form. It is lively, strange, intermittently explosive in every sense, and far more playful than its title initially suggests. A splendidly off-centre Stevenson for readers who like their classics with a little smoke, a little mischief, and a strong possibility that the whole enterprise may go unexpectedly bang.

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