"A Lodging for the Night" was Stevenson's first ever published fiction. In 1890 Arthur Conan Doyle characterized "The Pavilion on the Links" as "the high-water mark of Stevenson's genius" and "the first short-story in the world".[2] Barry Menikoff (1987) considers New Arabian Nights to be the starting point in the history of the English short story.[1]