Robert Louis Stevenson Biography

Dromo's Den

STEVENSON, Robert Louis (properly Robert Lewis Balfour) (1850-94). A Scottish romancer, essayist, and poet, born in Edinburgh, Nov. 13, 1850, the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a distinguished lighthouse engineer. After education at various schools and under private tutors, he entered Edinburgh University in 1867, intending to become an engineer. On this profession he turned his back in 1871, and, after partially recovering from an illness in which nervous exhaustion and pulmonary symptoms were combined, prepared for the bar, to which he was called in 1875. He had already written several essays and tales and some verse, chiefly with a view of, in his own forcible phrase, "playing the sedulous ape" to the great masters. His bent to a literary career was encouraged by the friendship of Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang, and Sidney Colvin, whom he met in London. A canoeing trip in Belgium and France and a walking tour in the Cévennes furnished material for An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey (1879), sketches in which he gave full proof of his exquisite literary art. Without attracting much attention, he was contributing to the Cornhill Magazine and Temple Bar short stories, and some of his best essays afterward collected lender the titles of Virginibus Puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882). To this period also belong the fantastic New Arabian Nights (1882), first published between 1876 and 1878. In 1876 he had met, in on artistic colony near Paris, Mrs. Osbourne, an American lady, afterward to be his wife. In 1879, hearing from California, that she was seriously ill, he made up his mind to go there. His resources were so limited that he made the long journey in an emigrant ship and train, noting his experiences and publishing them in The Amateur Emigrant (first printed entire in Edinburgh edition, see below), and Across the Plains (1892). He spent somewhat more than a year in California, often in very delicate health, and in 1880 married Mrs. Osbourne. The next few years were spent in various health resorts--Davos, the Riviera, Bournemouth, and in America in the Adirondacks, where he was a member of Dr. Trudeau's (q.v.) colony at Saranac Lake. Often under the most discouraging conditions, but with that brave cheerfulness which marked his character, he worked incessantly, and for years his life seemed to hang by a thread. Success first came to him with the publication in 1882 of Treasure Island, a tale of pure adventure. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), a striking ethical parable under the guise of fiction, attracted thoughtful people. In the same year appeared Kidnapped, which, with the Master of Ballantrae (1889), offered vivid pictures of past Scottish life. In 1888 he was in San Francisco, still in quest of health, from which city he sailed with his family on a voyage to the South Seas. Pleased with the scenery and the people of Samoa, he made a home for himself there in 1890 and acquired a position of influence among the natives. After a long struggle against tuberculosis, he died, by rupture of a blood vessel in the brain, Dec. 3, 1894, and was buried on the peak of Mount Vaea, above Vailima, his Samoan home. He left several manuscripts, among which were two romances, Weir of Hermiston (1896) and St. Ives (completed by Quiller-Couch, 1897). The former, which no writer was bold enough to touch, is generally considered, even in its unfinished state, Stevenson's masterpiece. Other works deserving special mention are: The Silverado Squatters (1883); Prince Otto (1885), a dainty romantic tale; three books in collaboration with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrong Box (1888), The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb Tide (1894); a volume of exquisite verse, Underwoods (1887); A Child's Garden of Verses (1885); The Merry Men and Other Tales (1886), a volume of short stories in which his mastery over the grim and terrible best shows itself; "Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin" (prefixed to Papers of Fleeming Jenkin, 1887); Island Nights' Entertainments (1893): Catriona (1893), the sequel to Kidnapped. Stevenson's delightful Letters (4 vols., New York) were edited by Sidney Colvin in 1911.

In both fiction and essays Stevenson displays an exquisite and finished style; his work is that of a true artist in words, and his example stimulated many younger artists of the day to more or less conscious imitation. His influence was also great in regard to the subject matter of fiction. At a time when the novel had forgotten to tell a story and was running into minute philosophical analysis, Stevenson came forward with adventure as purely romantic as Scott's, though in structure, in method of description and narrative, and in brilliancy of style he marks the great technical advance since the days of the Wavertey Novels. But it was not only the many delightful qualities of his written work which made Stevenson the best-loved writer of his time; even more, perhaps, he was endeared to countless readers by the frank revelation of a most engaging personality, which shines through all his works--of a serene undaunted cheerfulness, gained not by shutting his eyes to the pathos and the difficulty of human conditions, but by a brave rising to the height of their demands.

The most nearly completed collection of his works is the sumptuous Edinburgh edition (27 vols.) edited by Sidney Colvin (1894-98); two volumes of charming letters arranged by the same editor, with much biographical matter, appeared in 1899, and the Vailima Letters, written from Samoa in 1895. Consult also the biographies by his cousin Graham Balfour, his authorized biographer (2 vols., New York, 1903; abridged ed., 1 vol., with additions, ib., 1915); M. M. Black (Edinburgh, 1898), and L. C. Cornford (ib., 1899).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 522-523.