Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour 1850-94
Scottish writer

He was born in Edinburgh, the grandson of Robert Stevenson and son of Thomas Stevenson, engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses. His childhood was afflicted by constant illness, and he suffered throughout his life from a chronic bronchial condition which may have been tuberculosis. He studied engineering briefly at Edinburgh University (1867), but transferred to law, becoming an advocate in 1875. He never practised, however, and his true inclination was for writing. His first major works, Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the C�vennes (1879), describe travels in Belgium and northern France undertaken to improve his health. It was in France that he met Fanny Osbourne, n�e Vandegrift (1840-1914), an American woman separated from her husband. He followed her to America and they married in 1880 after her divorce, returning to Europe with her son Lloyd Osbourne. Initially dependent on his father, Stevenson began to make a living by writing for journals and magazines, especially Cornhill Magazine. The romantic adventure story Treasure Island brought him fame in 1883 and was followed by Kidnapped (1886), Catriona (1893) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) illustrates Stevenson's metaphysical interest in evil. Also written about this time were The Black Arrow (1888), the unfinished Weir of Hermiston (published posthumously in 1896) and St Ives, which was completed by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch in 1897. Stevenson's work as an essayist is seen at its best in Virginibus Puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882). A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) is a recollection of childhood in verse. Vernacular poems such as A London Sabbath Morn subtly describe the Calvinism he had renounced but which always intrigued him. In 1888 Stevenson set off with his family for the South Seas, famously visiting a leper colony and settling in Samoa, where with his wife and stepson he spent the last five years of his life on his estate of Vailima, which gives its name to the series of letters written to his friend Sidney Calvin. With his stepson he wrote The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894).

Bibliography: F McLynn, Robert Louis Stevenson: a Biography (1993); J C Furnas, Voyage to Windward (1950)