{\b Robert Louis Stevenson}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 13 November 1850

{\b Date of Death}.: 3 December 1894

{\b Works}.

Scottish essayist, poet, travel writer and novelist, best-known for his 
enduring and popular works such as Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll 
and Mr Hyde (both 1886) and Treasure Island (1883), a children's classic and 
the book that brought Stevenson his fame. 

His other works include Weir of Hermiston (1896), left unfinished at his 
death; The Merry Men (1887);The Black Arrow (1888); and a number of works 
written with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne: The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker 
(1892) and The Ebb Tide (1894). His travel writings include Travels with a 
Donkey in the Cervennes (1879) and An Inland Voyage (1878) as well as a number of 
collections also including essays and short stories: Virginibus Puerisque(1881), 
Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) and the New Arabian Nights(1882). His 
published poetry includes A Child's Garden of Verses (1885),Underwoods (1887) and 
the posthumously published Collected Poems (1950).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Treasure Island', 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', 'Kidnapped', 
'Travels with a Donkey', 'A Child's Garden of Verses', 'Requiem', '"Since Years 
Ago for Evermore"', 'The Celestial Surgeon', 'To the Muse', 'A Portrait', 'The 
Vagabond', '"I Will Make You Brooches"', 'Windy Nights', 'Tales and Fantasies'.

{\b General Comment}.

Born in Edinburgh, Stevenson was the son of an engineer and himself trained as an 
engineer at Edinburgh University for a short time before having to leave due to 
ill-health, after which he took up the law and was made an advocate in 1875. 
However, by this time Stevenson had already determined to become a writer and had 
published articles in a number of journals prior to meeting, and becoming friends,
with W.E. Henly with whom he wrote four plays from 1880 to 1885: Deacon Brodie 
(1880), Beau Austin (1884), Admiral Grundie 1884) and Macarie (1885).

After this period in Edinburgh, Stevenson spent a great part of his life 
travelling to numerous places in search of a cure for his bronchial condition. He 
met his future wife Fanny in France in 1876 and, three years later, specifically 
in pursuit of her, travelled to California, where, after she had become divorced 
from her husband, they were married and spent a honeymoon by the side of an 
abandoned tin-mine in 1880. The couple later settled in England for three years 
from 1884, where Stevenson consolidated his friendship with the novelist Henry 
James, and, in 1888, went, with his family, to the South Seas. Here he wrote his 
Father Damien: an Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu (1890) and 
became known as 'The Story Teller', prior to dying from a brain haemorrhage in 1894.