Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and A Child's Garden of Verses.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen, and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

In 1890, he settled in Samoa, where he was alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands. As a result, his writing turned away from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today, his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018 he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.

Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England in late 1873 (Stevenson was 23) when he met two people who became very important to him: Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with a son who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who married her in 1901.

Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a warm correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as "Madonna"). Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was the first editor of his letters after his death. He placed Stevenson's first paid contribution in The Portfolio, an essay titled "Roads."

Stevenson was soon active in London's literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and Leslie Stephen, the editor of The Cornhill Magazine, who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen took Stevenson to visit a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary named William Ernest Henley, an energetic and talkative poet with a wooden leg. Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888, and he is often considered to be the inspiration for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.

Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned to better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that. He made long and frequent trips to the neighborhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at Barbizon, Grez-sur-Loing, and Nemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there. He also traveled to Paris to visit galleries and theatres.

He qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, aged 24, and his father added a brass plate to the Heriot Row house reading "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate." His law studies did influence his books, but he never practiced law; all his energies were spent on travel and writing. One of his journeys was a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, a friend from the Speculative Society, a frequent travel companion, and the author of The Art of Golf (1887). This trip was the basis of his first travel book, An Inland Voyage (1878).