Thanks to Hollywood, Robert Louis Stevenson is reduced to three works -

Yet he was so much more, with a back catalogue in a career, tragically cut short by illness, which included poetry, children's books, travel writing, historical novels and literary essays.

Now, thanks to a grant of £34,500 from the Carnegie Trust, a project led by Napier University hopes to boost the writer's reputation at home and abroad.

Work on the website will begin next year and the project is expected to be live online in early 2010.

Dr Linda Dryden, a senior lecturer at the university, said:"He was a hugely important writer, and he was a close friend of Henry James and W E Henley.

"He influenced some of the foremost writers of our time and yet, in comparison to Conrad, Hardy or Kipling, his reputation has suffered and he's often reduced to this adventure story writer.

"We think this website will go some way towards reviving his reputation."