| Robert Louis Stevenson |
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Introduction
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(1850-1894).—
Novelist and essayist, was born at
Edinburgh, the son of Thomas S., a distinguished civil engineer. His
health was extremely delicate. He was destined for the engineering
profession, in which his family had for two generations been eminent,
but having neither inclination nor physical strength for it, he in
1871 exchanged it for law, and was called to the Bar in 1875, but
never practised. From childhood his interests had been literary, and
in 1871 he began to contribute to the Edinburgh University
Magazine and the Portfolio. A tour in a canoe in 1876 led
to the publication in 1878 of his first book, An Inland
Voyage. In the same year, The New Arabian Nights,
afterwards separately published, appeared in magazines, and in 1879 he
brought out Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. In that year
he went to California and m. Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe
in 1880 he entered upon a period of productiveness which, in view of
his wretched health, was, both as regards quantity and worth, highly
remarkable. The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature
for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edinburgh, and by
the publication of Virginibus Puerisque. Other works followed
in rapid succession. Treasure Island (1882), Prince Otto
and The Child’s Garden of Verse (1885), Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped (1886), Underwoods (poetry),
Memories and Portraits (essays), and The Merry Men, a
collection of short stories (1887), and in 1888 The Black
Arrow. In 1887 he went to America, and in the following year
visited the South Sea Islands where, in Samoa, he settled in 1890, and
where he died and is buried. In 1889 The Master of Ballantrae
appeared, in 1892 Across the Plains and The Wrecker, in
1893 Island Nights Entertainments and Catriona, and in
1894 The Ebb Tide in collaboration with his step-son, Mr. Lloyd
Osbourne. By this time his health was completely broken, but to the
last he continued the struggle, and left the fragments St. Ives
and Weir of Hermiston, the latter containing some of his best
work. They were published in 1897. Though the originality and power of
S.’s writings was recognised from the first by a select few, it
was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide
may be said to have turned with the publication of Treasure
Island in 1882, which at once gave him an assured place among the
foremost imaginative writers of the day. His greatest power is,
however, shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th
century, such as Kidnapped, Catriona, and Weir of
Hermiston, and in those, e.g., The Child’s Garden of
Verse, which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology
of childlife; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a marvellously
powerful and subtle psychological story, and some of his short tales
also are masterpieces. Of these Thrawn Janet and Will of the
Mill may be mentioned as examples in widely different kinds. His
excursions into the drama in collaboration with
W. E. Henley—Deacon Brodie, Macaire, Admiral Guinea, Beau
Austin,—added nothing to his reputation. His style is
singularly fascinating, graceful, various, subtle, and with a charm
all its own.
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Links |
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stevenson-house.co.uk Information site on Stevenson. Contains a biography, some facts on the author, a reading litst and details about the R. Stevenson House
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lepercolony.net An open letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu from R. Stevenson
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liternet A brief biography and some links
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unibg.it Thoroghly researched annotated tour of several aspects of this Victorian novelist. Live and works of Stevenson
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By PanEris
using Melati.
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