A World Made for Liars: Stevenson's 'Dynamiter' and the Death of the Real

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious." --Oscar Wilde. On the 18th of April 1884, an editorial in the 'New York Tribune' struck a prophetic note when it observed that the power of making war was no longer the prerogative of governments: "Dynamite, in fact, has put a tremendous power in the hands of individuals, and has reinforced all revolutionary and seditious tendencies enormously, making mere folly and fanaticism seriously dangerous, and increasing the natural bent of all lawless movements to gather strength as they go on... Indicators are that the new problem forced upon the world by the fertility of modern invention will give it serious trouble in the future." The 'Tribune' was, of course, extrapolating from current events, and many amongst Europe's Heads of State and Heads of Government would have mournfully concurred. Britain's forces of law and order had been forced to the same conclusion a good deal earlier.