Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (13 November 1850–3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. He grew up in Edinburgh in a family of lighthouse engineers. Often ill as a child, he listened to stories told by his nurse, Alison Cunningham, to whom he later dedicated A Child’s Garden of Verses. Stevenson studied engineering at the University of Edinburgh before switching to law. He qualified as an advocate in 1875 and chose a career in writing. His early books included Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, an account of a journey through southern France. Treasure Island appeared in book form in 1883 and helped shape the pirate adventure story. Its young narrator, Jim Hawkins, faces difficult choices about courage, loyalty, and whom to trust. Stevenson returned to adventure in Kidnapped, set in eighteenth-century Scotland, and explored the struggle between public respectability and hidden desires in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson settled with his family in Samoa in 1890 and continued writing there until his death. His books are still widely read, and characters such as Long John Silver and Dr Jekyll have inspired generations of stage and screen adaptations.