One of the classics of world literature.
Works: Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde…
Genre: Fantasy novel
Parents: Margaret Isabella Balfour and Thomas Stevenson
Spouse: Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne
Name: Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
“Life is not about having good cards, but about playing a poor hand well”
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Fathers
Son of Margaret Isabella Balfour and Thomas Stevenson. He grew up in a wealthy family, his father was an engineer.
He studied engineering at the university in his hometown.
Writer
From his childhood he had an inclination for literature. It was his nanny who instilled in him a love of reading by telling him stories while he lay in bed due to his continuing illness.
Influenced by the narrative of Walter Scott, many of his stories are set in the Middle Ages, although perhaps the Pacific is the literary space that he explored with greater relish. Sick with tuberculosis, he was forced to travel continuously in search of climates appropriate to his delicate state of health.
Plays
The first published writings of his are descriptions of some of these trips. Thus, Viaje inland (1878) recounts a canoe trip through France and Belgium that he had made in 1876, and Donkey Travels in the Cevannes (1879) the vicissitudes of a journey on foot through the mountains of southern France, in 1878.
One of his later voyages took him, on an emigrant ship, to California (1879-1880), where, in 1880, he married the American divorcée Fanny Osbourne. Another of them consisted of a pleasure cruise through the South Pacific (1889) to the Samoa Islands, where he and his wife remained until 1894, in a last effort to recover the writer’s health.
He was a literary celebrity in his lifetime, and his stories, from adventures to fantasy novels, entertained the young and old from generation to generation. By some critics he was seen for much of the 20th century as a second-rate writer being relegated to children’s literature and the horror genre.
The island of the treasure
He wrote at least three masterpieces: Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In two of them he created characters that went on to the gallery of archetypes of European literature: Long John Silver, the pirate in whose dark plans there is always a drop of humanity that ends up winning the hearts of readers; and Dr. Jekyll, the sage who lives on the fringes of everything and who falls into the Faustian temptation of experiencing the most dangerous sensations and to do so creates another self without moral or emotional barriers.
His novels include David Balfour and Weirde (1886), The Black Arrow (1888), and The Lord of Ballantree (1889). The unfinished Weir of Herminston (1896) is considered his masterpiece, as the extant fragments contain some of the most beautiful passages he wrote.
Essays
He proved to be a great essayist in Virginibus puerisque (1881), Family Studies of Men and Books (1882), and Memoirs and Portraits (1887). His autobiographical travel books, such as The Lonely House (1883), in which he recounted his impressions of his stay in a California mining camp, Across the Plains (1892), and Southern Isles (1892), were also well received by critics. 1896).
Poems
Some of his best poems are collected in the volume Garden of verses for children (1885). Among the other books of poems that he published stands out Back to the sea (1887). Marvelous Narratives (1882) and The Devil in the Bottle and Other Tales (1893) are collections of short stories.
Together with his adopted son, the writer Lloyd Osbourne, he wrote the novels The Wrong Box (1889) and The Hangover (1892).
Death
Robert Louis Stevenson died in Vailima, Samoa, on December 3, 1894, aged 44, from a cerebral hemorrhage, being buried on top of a mountain near Vailima, his Samoan home. The natives gave him the name of Tusitala (‘he who tells stories’).
Did you know…
modesty
It was the name of the donkey with which he traveled through the mountains of France.
Bibliography
Novels
Treasure Island (1883)
The Black Arrow (1883)
Prince Otto (1885)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
Kidnapped (1886)
The Master of Ballantrae (1888)
The Wrong Box (1889)
The Wrecker (1892)
Catriona (1893)
The Ebb-Tide (1894)
Weir of Hermiston (1896)
St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897).
Stories
New Arabian Nights (1882)
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885)
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887)
Island Nights’ Entertainments or South Sea Tales (1893)
Fables (1896).
Other works
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1879)
Virginibas Puerisque, and Other Papers (1881)
Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882)
Memories and Portraits (1887)
Aes Triplex (1887)
Father Damien: an Open Letter to the Rev
Dr Hyde of Honolulu (1890)
Vailima Letters (1895)
The New Lighthouse on the Dhu Heartach Rock, Argyllshire
Sophia Scarlet.
Poetry
A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885)
Underwoods (1887)
Ticonderoga: A Legend of the West Highlands (1887)
Ballads (1891)
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896).
Travel books
An Inland Voyage (1878)
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)
The Silverado Squatters (1883)
Across the Plains (from 1879–80, published 1892)
The Amateur Emigrant (from 1879–80, published 1895)
The Old and New Pacific Capitals (1882)
In the South Seas
A Footnote to History, Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892).
In Spanish
1876 A Journey to the Continent
1876 Apology of the idlers and other idleness
1881 Family Studies of Man and Books
1881 Janet the Crooked
1882 The New Arabian Nights
1882 The Suicide Club
1883 Treasure Island
1884 The Body Snatcher
1885 The Blaster
1885 Markheim
1885 Pot
1886 The Adventures of David Balfour
1886 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1887 Men of the Merry World
1888 The Black Arrow
1889 The Earl of Ballantrae
1889 Adventures of a Corpse
1891 The Devil in the Bottle
1892 The Hangover
1893 Nights on the Island
1893 Tales from the South Seas
1894 The Island of Adventure, also edited as Bajamar
1896 The Hermiston Dock
1996 The immature boat
What is Robert Louis Stevenson known for?
Robert Louis Stevenson is best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island (1882), and the adult horror story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).
What is Robert Louis Stevenson most famous poem?
He is probably best known for A Child’s Garden of Verses, but he also wrote much lyric poetry, and a range of lively verse in Scots. It was in his poetry that Stevenson most effectively expressed the pain of his separation from Scotland.
How did Robert Louis Stevenson become famous?
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, best known for his works Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
What did Robert Louis Stevenson suffer from?
Stevenson had many occasions to think about his own mortality. Frequently ill since childhood, he’d suffered from a chronic lung ailment with typical symptoms of tuberculosis, including breathing problems and spitting up blood.
What is the famous quote by Robert Louis Stevenson?
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
