Robert Louis Stevenson
1850–1894
Robert Louis Balfour, son of Thomas Stevenson, C.E. (1818–87), and grandson of Robert, was born in Edinburgh,
on 13 November 1850. At first intended for the family calling, he turned to law, studied at Edinburgh University, and was called to
the Scottish bar. He soon found his true bent in letters, and quickly forced his way into the front rank of contemporary
writers. Some experiences which supplied inspiration were journeys in France by canoe and on foot, a voyage across the
Atlantic in the steerage of an emigrant ship, the after-journey across the continent in an emigrant train,
and his five years residence in Samoa, where he settled for health’s sake in
1889.
From the first his work showed individuality and a perfect style. His earliest books were
An Island Voyage (1878), Edinburgh; Picturesque Notes (1878),
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevènnes (1879), Virginibus
Puerisque (1881), and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882).
The New Arabian Nights (1882) was a collection of grotesque romances.
Treasure Island (1883) was a success in a literary kind the secret of which seemed lost. Hardly less excellent was
Kidnapped (1886); but The Master of Ballantrae (1889) and The Black
Arrow (1888) fall into lower rank. A Child’s Garden of
Verse (1885) stands almost by itself as an imaginative realisation of the make-believe of
childhood. Later volumes of verse were Underwoods (1887) and
Ballads (1891). His Prince Otto (1885) has been pronounced the test of the true Stevensonian;
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) compelled exacting critics to commendation. Further works were
The Silverado Squatters (1884), The Merry Men (1887), Island
Night’s Entertainments (1893), and Catriona (a continuation of
Kidnapped, 1893). With his wife he wrote The Dynamiter (1885), and with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne,
The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb
Tide (1894). He defended Father Damien in 1890, and showed his versatility by a memoir of
Professor Fleeming Jenkin (1887) and A Footnote to History (on Samoan politics, 1892). His health had long
been broken; he died suddenly on 3 December 1894, and was buried by his own desire on a mountain-top behind
his Samoan home of Vailima. Weir of Hermiston, an unfinished romance, promised to be his
masterpiece; St Ives (completed by Quiller-Couch) appeared in 1897.
The Waif Woman was not published until 1916.
