Robert Louis Stevenson

The Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was one of the most popular and highly regarded British writers of the end of the 19th century. He played a significant part in the revival of the novel of romance.

During Robert Louis Stevenson's youth the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott and his followers had been eclipsed by the realism of William Makepeace Thackeray and Anthony Trollope. Writing in conscious opposition to this trend, Stevenson formulated his theoretical position in his essays "A Gossip on Romance" (1882), "A Humble Remonstrance" (1884), and "The Lantern-bearers" (1888). Romance, he wrote, is not concerned with objective truth but rather with things as they appear to the subjective imagination, with the "poetry of circumstance." Romance, according to Stevenson, avoids complications of character and morality and dwells on action and adventure.

Stevenson was born on Nov. 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, the son of a noted lighthouse builder and harbor engineer. Though robust and healthy at birth, Stevenson soon became a victim of constant respiratory ailments that later developed into tuberculosis and made him skeletally thin and frail most of his life. By the time he entered Edinburgh University at the age of 16, ostensibly to study engineering, Stevenson had fallen under the spell of language and had begun to write. For several years he attended classes irregularly, cultivating a bohemian existence complete with long hair and velvet jackets and acquainting himself with Edinburgh's lower depths.

Early Works

When he was 21 years old, Stevenson openly declared his intention of becoming a writer against the strong opposition of his father. Agreeing to study law as a compromise, Stevenson was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1875. Having traveled to the Continent several times for health and pleasure, he now swung back and forth between Scotland and a growing circle of artistic and literary friends in London and Paris. Stevenson's first book, An Inland Voyage (1878), related his adventures during a canoe trip on the canals of Belgium and France.

In 1876 in France, Stevenson had met an American woman named Fanny Osbourne. Separated from her husband, she was 11 years older than Stevenson and had two children. Two years later Stevenson and Osbourne became lovers. In 1878 Osbourne returned to California to arrange a divorce, and a year later Stevenson followed her. After traveling across America in an emigrant train, Stevenson arrived in Monterey in poor health. After his marriage, a stay in an abandoned mining camp, later recounted in The Silverado Squatters (1883), restored his health. A year after setting out for the United States, Stevenson was back in Scotland. But the climate there proved impossible, and for the next 4 years he and his wife lived in Switzerland and in the south of France.

Despite ill health these years were productive. In his collections Virginibus puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) Stevenson arrived at maturity as an essayist. Addressing his readers with confidential ease, he reflected on the common beliefs and incidents of life with a mild iconoclasm, a middling disillusionment.

The stories Stevenson collected in The New Arabian Nights (1883) and The Merry Men (1887) range from detective stories to Scottish dialect tales. The evocation of mood and setting that he practiced in his travel essays was used to great effect here. Despite his theory of romance, he was unable entirely to keep away from moral issues in these stories, but he was rarely successful in integrating moral viewpoint with action and scene.

Early Novels

Treasure Island (1881, 1883), first published as a serial in a children's magazine, ranks as Stevenson's first popular book, and it established his fame. A perfect romance according to Stevenson's formula, the novel—riding over all the problems of morality and character that might have arisen—recounts a boy's involvement with murderous pirates. Kidnapped (1886), set in Scotland shortly after the abortive Jacobite rebellion of 1745, has the same charm. In its sequel, David Balfour (1893), Stevenson could not avoid psychological and moral problems without marked strain. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) he dealt directly with the nature of evil in man and the hideous effects of a hypocrisy that seeks to deny it. This work pointed the way toward Stevenson's more serious later novels. During this same period he published a very popular collection of poetry, A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).

After the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson again traveled to the United States, this time for his health. He lived for a year at Saranac Lake, N.Y., in the Adirondacks. In 1889 Stevenson and his family set out on a cruise of the South Sea Islands. When it became clear that only there could he live in relative good health, he settled on the island of Upolu in Samoa. He bought a plantation (Vailima), built a house, and gained influence with the natives, who called him Tusifala ("teller of tales"). By the time of his death on Dec. 3, 1894, Stevenson had become a significant figure in island affairs. His observations on Samoan life were published in the collection In the South Seas (1896) and in A Footnote to History (1892). Of the stories written in these years, "The Beach of Falesá" in Island Nights' Entertainments (1893) remains particularly interesting as an exploration of the confrontation between European and native ways of life.

Later Novels

The Master of Ballantrae (1889), set in the same period as Kidnapped, showed a new sophistication in Stevenson's use of the elements of romance. Its basic theme involved complexities of character that his earlier romances had deliberately avoided. In the more advanced Weir of Hermiston, the legends of the romantic Scottish past saturate the setting and serve as a symbolic background for a tragic conflict between the primitive energies of a father and his sensitive, effete son. Left unfinished at his death, this novel would have ranked as Stevenson's greatest work. While living in the South Pacific, Stevenson also collaborated on three novels with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne.

Further Reading

The best biographies of Stevenson are David Daiches, Robert Louis Stevenson (1947), and Joseph C. Furnas, Voyage to Windward: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (1951). Recommended critical studies include David Daiches, Stevenson and the Art of Fiction (1951); Robert Kiely, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Fiction of Adventure (1964), and Edwin M. Eigner, Robert Louis Stevenson and Romantic Tradition (1966).

Additional Sources

Bell, Ian, Dreams of exile: Robert Louis Stevenson, a biography, New York: H. Holt, 1993.

Hammond, J. R. (John R.), A Robert Louis Stevenson chronology, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.

McLynn, F. J., Robert Louis Stevenson: a biography, New York:Random House, 1994. □

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850–94, Scottish novelist, poet, and essayist, b. Edinburgh. Handicapped from youth by delicate health, he struggled all his life against tuberculosis. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1875, but he never practiced. At an early age he had begun to write, and gradually he devoted himself to literature. The essays that were later published as Virginibus Puerisque (1881) and Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) began to appear in the Cornhill Magazine in 1876; he was soon contributing to periodicals such famous stories as "A Lodging for the Night" and "The Sire de Malétroit's Door" and the tales later published as New Arabian Nights (1882). An Inland Voyage (1878), an account of a canoe trip in Belgium and France, was his first published book.

In 1880 Stevenson married Frances Osbourne, an American divorcée ten years his senior. With W. E. Henley he wrote four plays, only moderately successful. His first popular books were Treasure Island (1883), a swashbuckling adventure story of a search for Captain Kidd's buried treasure, and the fantasy Prince Otto (1885). A Child's Garden of Verses appeared in 1885, followed in 1886 by two of his best-known works: Kidnapped, an adventure tale noted for its Scottish setting, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a science-fiction thriller with moral overtones.

Constantly in search of climates favorable to his health, Stevenson went in 1887 to Saranac Lake in New York, where he began The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1889 he and his family set out for the South Seas, settling on the island of Upolu in what is now Samoa. There Stevenson gained the affection of the natives, who knew him as Tusitala (teller of tales). At his estate there ( "Vailima" ) he collaborated with his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, on the novels The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb Tide (1894), and wrote and planned numerous tales and essays. He died in Samoa and, by his own request, was buried high on Mt. Vaea "under the wide and starry sky," which he described in his famous poem "Requiem."

Among Stevenson's other published works are Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879); The Merry Men (1887); The Black Arrow (1888), a novel; A Footnote to History (1893), a defense of Father Damien ; and a novel, The Weir of Hermiston (1896), which, although uncompleted, contains some of Stevenson's finest writing. Stevenson's reputation suffered severely after his death—he was considered an overly mannered writer of children's stories. However, by the mid-20th cent. he was again regarded as a writer of power and originality with a strong moral vision.

Bibliography: See The Complete Short Stories: The Centenary Edition (1994), ed. by I. Bell; The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (2 vol., 1994), ed. by B. A. Booth and E. Mehew; biographies by G. Balfour (2 vol., 1901; repr. 1968), R. O. Masson (1914, repr. 1973), D. Daiches (1947), J. C. Furnas (1952), J. Calder (1980), F. McLynn (1993), I. Bell (1994), P. Callow (2001), and C. Harman (2005); studies by J. Calder (1981), P. Maixner (1981), and N. Rankin (1988).

Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour (originally Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson) (1850–94), entered Edinburgh University to study engineering but soon abandoned this for the law. In 1875 L. Stephen introduced him to W. E. Henley, who became a close friend, and with whom he was to collaborate on four plays. From this time on much of his life was spent travelling in search of health; he suffered from a chronic bronchial condition (possibly tuberculosis). In France in 1876 he met Mrs Fanny Osbourne whom he married in 1880. He published An Inland Voyage (1878), describing a canoe tour in Belgium and France, and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), relating a tour with his donkey Modestine. He travelled to California in 1879; published The Silverado Squatters (1883); then returned to Europe, settling at Bournemouth for three years in 1884, where he consolidated a friendship with H. James. By this time he had published widely in periodicals, and many of his short stories, essays, and travel pieces were collected in volume form. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island (1883), brought him fame, which increased with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). This was followed by his popular Scottish romances, Kidnapped (1886), its sequel Catriona (1893), and The Master of Ballantrae (1889).

In 1888 Stevenson had set out with his family entourage for the South Seas. He visited the leper colony at Molokai, which inspired his celebrated defence of the Belgian priest Father Damien (1841–89), in Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverand Dr Hyde of Honolulu (1890). He finally settled in Samoa at Vailima, where he gained a reputation as ‘Tusitala’ or ‘The Story Teller’. He died there suddenly from a brain haemorrhage, while working on his unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston (1896).

Stevenson published many other volumes, including The Merry Men (1887, with ‘Markheim’ and his earliest Scottish story, ‘Thrawn Janet’); many travel books; Island Nights' Entertainments (1893), which includes ‘The Beach of Falesá’; and St Ives (1897, unfinished, completed by Quiller-Couch). With his stepson Lloyd Osbourne he wrote The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb-Tide (1894). He also published volumes of poetry, including A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) and Underwoods (1887): his Collected Poems, ed. Janet Adam Smith appeared in 1950. In them as in many of his prose works, critics have detected beneath the lightness of touch a sense of apprehension, sin, and suffering. The theme of dualism and the doppelgänger recurs in his work, as does an admiration for morally ambiguous heroes or anti-heroes. Although his more popular books have remained constantly in print, and have been frequently filmed, his critical reputation has been obscured by attention to his vivid personality and adventurous life.

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–94). Writer. A spirited but sickly child, Stevenson abandoned engineering studies at Edinburgh for law but, although admitted as advocate (1875), never practised: rejecting parental calvinism for liberal bohemianism, he was determined to write. Much of his life was spent journeying in search of health after tuberculosis developed, and this provided material for future publication; it was while in France that he met his future wife, the American Fanny Osbourne. His output covered essays, short stories, poetry (A Child's Garden of Verses), travelogues, and collaborations with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, while delighting readers with Scottish romances (Kidnapped, Catriona) and story-telling (Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). Financially independent after his father's death (1887), Stevenson took the whole family to the South Seas, settling eventually at Vailima (Samoa), where his health improved partially and he gained a reputation as ‘Tusitala’ (‘Teller of Tales’).

A. S. Hargreaves

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–94),Scottish novelist, essayist, poet, and traveler, in 1880 married an American, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, whom he had followed from Europe to California. Among the literary results of his sojourn in the U.S. are The Silverado Squatters (1883), The Amateur Emigrant (1894), Across the Plains (1894), and a lost, unpublished “experiment in sensation,” Arizona Breckonridge; or, A Vendetta of the West, of which he finished only three parts. In 1887–88 he returned to the U.S., living for several months at Saranac Lake, writing essays for Scribner's Magazine and, with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, a farcical story, The Wrong Box (1888). In 1888, financed by the publisher S.S. McClure, he went to Samoa and the South Seas, where his writing included a vindication of Father Damien; and, with Osbourne, The Wrecker (1892), partly set in San Francisco, in which Pinkerton is modeled on McClure, and The Ebb‐Tide (1894), set in the South Seas.

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–94) Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet. He is celebrated for his classic children's adventure stories, such as Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886). His later work includes historical novels, such as The Black Arrow (1888) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889), as well as the psychological novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Stevenson spent the last years of his life in Samoa, where he wrote The Ebb-Tide (1894).

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/stevenso.htm

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–94). Writer. A spirited but sickly child, Stevenson abandoned engineering studies at Edinburgh for law but never practised. Much of his life was spent in search of health after tuberculosis developed. His output covered essays, short stories, poetry (A Child's Garden of Verses), travelogues, and collaborations with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, while delighting readers with Scottish romances (Kidnapped, Catriona) and story‐telling (Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).