November 13, 1850

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father Thomas belonged to a family of engineers who had built many of the lighthouses around the rocky coast of Scotland. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour, came from a family of lawyers and ministers.
From a very early age Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. The illness caused him to spend much of his time in bed when most children his age would be outside engaging in adventures. A passion for literature developed, as he could experience through books what his ailment would not allow.

This lanky, odd, frail, headstrong boy was a dreamer of dreams, and he soon grew desperately in love with writing. Beginning to compose stories even before he could read, he felt himself destined to be an author.

1860’s

As an only child, Stevenson was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. At the age of seventeen he entered Edinburgh University to study engineering and then law. However, he spent most of his time indulging his romantic nature by studying French Literature, Scottish history and the works of Darwin and Spencer. While on the university’s summer vacations he traveled to France to be in the company of other young artists, both writers and painters. During these school years he was able to publish his first texts for University magazines. As his passion for writing could not die, Stevenson soon abandoned law for his first and last love: literature.

~ You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand? ~ RLS

1870’s

In Stevenson’s day, people with health problems were encouraged to venture to better climates. Stevenson, who was restless anyway, spent several years traveling through and writing about Europe. In addition to travel books, he also wrote short stories, novels, and poems; and despite his poor health he became a prolific writer.

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.

~ Songs of Travel ~

1876

At the age of twenty-five Stevenson met thirty-six year-old American, Fanny Osborne—an art student who was separated from her husband and studying in Paris with her children. Stevenson and Fanny fell in love. In 1879 after three years of romance, he moved to San Francisco to be with her after she had obtained a divorce.

~ A friend is a gift you give yourself. ~ RLS

1880

Though the journey to California nearly killed him, Stevenson married Fanny there and then returned to Scotland. Stevenson’s health would cause the family to often move throughout Europe in search of a better climate.

~ To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. ~ RLS

1883

While on summer holidays in Scotland, the cold rainy weather would force the Stevenson family to amuse themselves indoors. One day Stevenson and his twelve-year-old stepson, Lloyd (Fanny’s son by her first marriage), created the map of an imaginary ‘Treasure Island’. The map so inspired Stevenson’s imagination, that ‘On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire’ he began to write a TREASURE ISLAND entertainment for the rest of the family.

Though he never took the work seriously, Stevenson gained first fame with this romantic adventure story. This pirate tale included archetypal character Captain Long John Silver, and Stevenson’s poem: “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest; Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

1885

Since Stevenson’s childhood was often plagued with illness, he missed out on a lot of the more rowdy escapades of being a child. He would instead spend his time imagining what it must be like. As usual his daydreams were transferred to the page and he soon wrote A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES which includes over 60 of his poems. It is widely considered to be one of the best collections of children’s poems ever written, and many of them have been made into popular songs.

1886

KIDNAPPED, the story of Stevenson’s distant ancestor, David Balfour, gained critical respect. In this youthful adventure tale set in 1751, the two main characters are a lowland Scot and a swashbuckling Highlander. The characters’ interactions are seen as a clash between the "two Scotlands". The story includes a kidnapping, a murder, a shipwreck, and a struggle to survive on a desert island—as well as multiple Highland adventures.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, a best seller which made Stevenson’s reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, was published in attempts to raise money to support the family. Stevenson said that “Brownies” brought him the story in a dream. He furiously wrote the story in three days while in bed. When he at last read the story aloud to his eager household, Fanny insisted that he rewrite the story. She urged him to make the wicked Dr. Jekyll a good man who had difficulty controlling his evil instincts. She then suggested that Dr. Jekyll would depict the dual image of Victorian society: “prim and proper on the surface, unrestrained and lewd underneath.” At first Stevenson shouted arguments back at her. Later he returned and admitted he had missed the whole point, the very essence of the story. After throwing the manuscript in the fire, he rewrote the novel in six days to become the story known throughout the entire English speaking world.

1887

After the death of his father, Stevenson finally abandoned Britain. Along with his wife, widowed mother, and stepson, he again journeyed to America before embarking on a voyage through the South Pacific.

Stevenson never returned to Scotland, as he had at last found a climate that suited his health. Fighting against his illness, he traveled to the Marquise islands, Tahiti, and Honolulu. He finally decided to settle on the island of Upolu in Samoa, where he wrote In the South Seas (1896). The islanders soon gave him the name “Tusitala” or “Teller of Tales.” The writer himself translated it “Chief White Information.”

The relocation to Samoa brought him health, distance from the distractions of literary circles, and the creation of his mature literary persona: the traveler and the exile—quite aware of the harsh sides of life, but also celebrating the joy of his own skill as a weaver of words and teller of tales.

~ To be what we are, and to become what we are capable
of becoming, is the only end of life. ~ RLS

1889

MASTER OF BALLANTRAE was his next ‘adult’ story. As he could not forget the images of his homeland, this novel was also set in Scotland. This is a “Doubles” narrative in which the brothers James and Henry have similarities with Jekyll and Hyde—not only in their initials, but also because of the personality of the ‘good’ character, the harassing “Double”, and the simultaneous death of the two rivals. Set during the Jacobite risings after the rebellion of 1745, this story also contrasts the dual nature of Scotland's heritage.

1893

In CATRIONA, Stevenson continues the adventures of David Balfour by developing a romance between the character and the daughter of a renegade, and also by weaving in struggles against a treacherous scheme.

December 3, 1894

Stevenson died of a brain hemorrhage in Samoa at the age of 44. At his request, the islanders carried his body to the peak of Mount Vaea where he was then buried. His poem “Requiem” was inscribed on his gravestone as an 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 the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”

RLS

Despite his illness, Stevenson was a man who had hiked, canoed, and sailed all over the world, who had loved fervently, and who wrote everything else that his imagination would create.

His last work, WEIR OF HERMISTON, was left unfinished, but is considered his masterpiece. A romance novel pivoting on the bitterly fraught relationship between a father and son, it was what he was working on the day he died.

Stevenson’s reputation suffered severely after his death—he was considered an overly mannered writer of children’s stories. However, by the mid-20th century, he was again regarded as a writer of power and innovation.

The Celestial Surgeon
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: --
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!

By Robert Louis Stevenson

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