Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850-December 3, 1894), was a novelist, poet, and travel writer.
Life
Stevenson was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of Thomas Stevenson, a successful engineer, and Margaret Balfour. They were both very religious. Robert gave up the religion of his parents while in his university years, but the teaching that he received as a child continued to influence him.
Although ill with tuberculosis from childhood, Stevenson had a full life. He began his education as an engineer (and his lighthouse designs were much praised). At the age of 18 he dropped the name Balfour and changed his middle name from Lewis to Louis (but retaining the original pronunciation); from this time on he began styling himself "RLS". He turned to the law because of poor health, but he never practised. He ended as a tribal leader (called by his tribe Tusitala) and plantation owner at his residence "Vailima" in Samoa, all this in addition to his literary career.
Stevenson's novels of adventure, romance, and horror are of considerable psychological depth and have continued in popularity long after his death, both as books and as films.
His wife Fanny (née Osbourne) was a great support in his adventurous and arduous life.
Stevenson made several trips to the Kingdom of Hawaii and became a good friend of King David Kalakaua with whom Stevenson spent much time. Stevenson also became best friends with the king's niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani, also of Scottish heritage. Since the tragic deaths of both Stevenson and Kaiulani, historians have debated the true nature of their relationship as to whether or not they had romantic feelings for each other. Because of the age difference, such stories have often been discredited. In 1888, Stevenson travelled to the island of Molokai just weeks after the death of Father Damien. He spent twelve days at the missionary priest's residence, Bishop Home at Kalawao. Stevenson taught the local girls to play croquet. When Congregationalist and Presbyterian ministers began to incite slander against Father Damien out of spite for his Catholicism, Stevenson wrote one of his most famous essays in defense of the life and work of the missionary priest.
Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage in Vailima in Samoa, aged 44.
Fiction
- Treasure Island (1883) His first major success, a tale of piracy, buried treasure, and adventure, has been filmed frequently. It was originally called The Sea-Cook.
- The Black Arrow (1884)
- Kidnapped (1886) is an historical novel that tells of the boy David Balfour's pursuit of his inheritance and his alliance with Alan Breck in the intrigues of Jacobite troubles between England and Scotland. Catriona (1893) is a sequel, telling of Balfour's further adventures.
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), a short novel about a dual personality much depicted in plays and films, also influential in the growth of understanding of the subconscious mind through its treatment of a kind and intelligent physician who turns into a psychopathic monster after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality.
- The New Arabian Nights (1882), a collection of tales.
- The Body Snatcher (1885), another influential horror novel.
- The Wrong Box, (1892), with Lloyd Osbourne, a comic novel of a tontine, also filmed (1966). A tontine is a group life-insurance policy in which the last survivor gets all the insurance. Both in the novel and in real life, it is an incentive to murder, and no longer legal in most countries.
- The Master of Ballantrae (1888), a masterful tale of revenge, set in Scotland and America.
- Wier of Hermiston (1896), novel, unfinished at his death, considered to have promised great artistic growth.
Poetry
- A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), written for children but also popular with their parents. Includes such favorites as "My Shadow" and "The Lamplighter". Often thought to represent a positive reflection of the author's sickly childhood.
Travel Writing
Island Literature
Although not well known, his island fiction and non-fiction is among the most valuable and collected of the 19th century body of work that addresses the Pacific area.
Non-fiction works on the Pacific
- In the South Seas. A collection of Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific.
- A Footnote to History, Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
Island fiction
- The Beach at Falesa, one of his most mature works, it explores the relationship between white traders and islanders in a way that anticipates Conrad and Maugham.
- An Island Nights' Entertainment. Three great stories: The Bottle Imp, The Beach at Falesá and The Isle of Voices.
- The Wrecker with Lloyd Osbourne
- The Ebb Tide with Lloyd Osbourne
Works in Scots
Stevenson also wrote poetry and prose in Scots. See
