Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is set to be probed by academics for his works' "colonial stereotypes" as part of an almost £1 million-valued research drive.

The three-year project, "Remediating Stevenson: Decolonising Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific Fiction Through Graphic Adaptation, Arts Education and Community Engagement", is being propped up by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)'s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for an eye-watering £809,334 of taxpayer money.

And its researchers at the University of Edinburgh can expect to travel across the world in order to study how the Victorian author treated indigenous populations in Pacific islands like Samoa and Hawaii.

The project's website says: "Given that educational institutions throughout the world are actively engaged in decolonising their curricula, Stevenson's work and legacy present a particularly valuable focus of inquiry."

University of Edinburgh researchers can expect to travel across the world to research Stevenson's "colonial stereotypes"

While Stevenson treated local people "with considerable agency and dignity", the website adds, his works include "many of the colonial stereotypes typical of fin-de-siècle [end-of-century] Western literature".

One of the aims of the project is to develop "the first ever graphic adaptation" of Stevenson's Island Nights’ Entertainments stories in Samoan and Hawaiian.

The six-figure-valued project will also see its researchers host "arts education workshops" across Hawaii, Samoa and Scotland.

In its final year, its team will be holding conferences in the three locations in which stakeholders are "invited to reflect on their own experiences of remediating [Stevenson's] creative outputs in the contemporary cultural landscape."

But Joanna Marchong, investigations campaign manager at the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Bureaucrats who insist on funding this nonsense should be told to walk the plank."

While a UKRI spokesperson said: "UKRI invests in a diverse research and innovation portfolio.

"Decisions to fund the research projects we support are made via a rigorous peer review process by relevant independent experts from across academia and business."

GB News has approached the University of Edinburgh for comment.