ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON


Scottish author (1850-1894)

Biography:


Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edimbrugh in 1850. Son of a learned engineer, he attended the Enginner School of Anstuthen and later, after studing law, he "passed advocate" in 1875 but did not practice sice by now he knew he wanted to be a writer. He had serious problems with his health.
He collaborated with Cornhill Magazine. He began travelling in search for a better and healthier climate since he suffered tuberculosis. He published An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879).
In Fontainebleau, France, he met Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, the American woman to whom he got married in 1880. She advised him on the composition of his horror story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde (1885). His success with Treasure Island (1883) is due to his poetic realism and his renewal of literature of adventures.
Fighting against his illness, Stevenson had to go to Marquise islands, Tahiti, Honolulu and finally he decided to live in Samoa, where he wrote In the South Seas (1896) and his unfinished novel Weir of Hermiston (posthumous publication of 1896). He died in Vailima, Samoa, in 1894, struck down by apoplexy. Following his last will, he was buried in Vaea mountain, where his grave has views on the Pacific Ocean.
He died when he was most prolific as writer. He has left us many novels such as The Black Arrow (1883), The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894) and many stories like New Arabian Nights (1882) (see The Arabian Nights), poems like A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) and essays.


Robert Louis Stevenson, author of illustrated works:


Treasure Island , illustrated by Newell Convers Wyeth, Scribner, 1911, 14 illustrations.
A Child's Garden of Verses, illustrated by Thea Kliros, Dover Children's Thrift Classics, 1992.
Kidnapped (abridged), illustrated by Thea Kliros, Dover Children's Thrift Classics, 1996. Dr. Jekyll et Mr. Hyde, illustrated by Véronique Ageorges, Deux coqs d'or, 1994.
Un mort encombrant, illustrated by Mathieu Blanchin, Hachette, 1994.
L'île au trésor, illustrated by François Roca, Nathan, 1999.


Critical analysis on Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson:


J.P. Naugrette, Louis Stevenson, l'aventure et son double, Presses de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1987.

Robert Louis Stevenson on the Internet:


Site sur R.L. Stevenson (in French)