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Robert Louis Stevenson

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON was born of cultured parents, November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh. From infancy his health was delicate. His schooling was therefore desultory, but he early adored the tales and poems read to him by his devoted nurse, Alison Cunningham, and so began the passion for literature which dominated his life. His father, Thomas Stevenson, an able civil engineer, desired Louis to follow his profession, but after more than three years' study he abandoned it. He next read law to please his father, but he genuinely cared only for writing.

Perhaps no figure in literature is more loved for sheer valiance of spirit than Robert Louis Stevenson. He contended all his life against disease with high courage and dauntless gaiety. In France and California, in the Adirondacks and the South Sea Islands, he pursued the will-o'-the-wisp, health, which always eluded him. From 1880 to his death in 1884 his wife was a source of strength and inspiration; yet, exiled from friends, he suffered physical pain and weary disappointment. Much of his best work was written in bed. Nevertheless, in seventeen years he produced four volumes of essay, seven romances, five collections of fantastic tales, two of South Sea yarns, three of poetry, five volumes of travel and topography, one of political history, and left material for several posthumous works. "Treasure Island" is perhaps the best loved of his romances. Stevenson said: "If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my time." And again, as he wrote it: "It's awful fun, boys' stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart, that's all."