His life and work
Robert Louis Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850.
He was often ill as a child and spent a long time reading or listening to stories read to him by his nurse. His health improved as a teenager and he went to Edinburgh University to study engineering, his father's profession. He decided however that he wasn't suited to the subject and completed a law degree instead, though he never worked as lawyer.
After finishing university he travelled widely in Europe, describing his experiences in 'An Inland Voyage' and 'Travels with a Donkey in the Cervannes'.
In 1876 in France he met his future wife Fanny Osbourne. She was an American who married Stevenson four years later after he endured a physically draining and poorly-funded journey through America. They honeymooned at an abandoned silver mine called Silverado in Caliornia, where there is now a Stevenson museum and a Robert Louis Stevenson State Park.
They returned to Britain in August 1880 and for the next seven years lived in Scotland, England and France. It was at this time that Stevenson wrote 'Treasure Island', his first widely popular book, 'Kidnapped' and 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
He also wrote two books of poetry, including 'A Child's Garden of Verses'.
On the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson and his family travelled firstly to America in an attempt to find a better climate for his health and then on to the South Seas. Stevenson chartered a yacht and spent three years sailing and visiting the Pacific islands including the Hawaiian and Samoan islands, .
In 1890 he bought land on Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands, and named his estate Vailima (Five Rivers). Stevenson was known in Samoan as Tusitala or 'Storyteller'.
He died suddenly at his home there on 3 December 1894, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage, at the age of 44.
He was buried on Mount Vaea and his gravestone is inscribed with one of his poems which he had always intended to be his epitaph:
'Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill'
His impact as a writer
For many years after his death Stevenson was considered to be a minor writer of adventure and horror stories, but his work was consistently the inspiration for adaptations and films.
His literary skill and impact was re-assessed in the later 20th century and today he is considered to be an important and influential writer.
According to Carl MacDougall on the BBC Writing Scotland website:
Carl MacDougallStevenson has been acknowledged as one of the most important writers of Scottish fiction. His writing highlighted the social, philosophical and cultural divisions of nineteenth-century Scotland and has been the inspiration for numerous later writers.
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