Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on November 13th, 1850. In the brief span of forty-four years, dogged by poor health, he made an enormous contribution to English literature with his novels, poetry, and essays. The son of upper-middle-class parents, he was the victim of lung trouble from birth, and spent a sheltered childhood surrounded by constant care. The balance of his life was taken up with his unremitting devotion to work, and a search for a cure to his illness that took him all over the world. His travel essays were published widely, and his short fiction was gathered in many volumes. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, was published in 1883 and brought him great fame, which only increased with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). He followed with the Scottish romances Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888 he set out with his family for the South Seas, traveling to the leper colony at Molokai, and finally settling in Samoa, where he died on December 3rd, 1894.
Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated authors in the world. He has been greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Marcel Schwob, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins."
***********
The story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life is almost as interesting as some of the imaginary tales he told so incomparably well. Unable to pursue the family occupation of lighthouse engineer because of bad health, Stevenson wandered far from his native Edinburgh in his search for health and romance. He finally went to Samoa, where he died at forty-four. The natives there worshipped him as Tusitala, which means "Teller of Tales." It was a fitting epitaph. As a travel-writer of books like Travels with a Donkey he is charming; as a writer of verse in A Child's Garden of Verses, he will be read as long as children read. But it is as a teller of tales-short tales like The Sire de Malétroit's Door, and long tales like Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Kidnapped that he is remembered and read today by everyone, young and old, who likes a good story well-told.
Did you find this review helpful?