Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson
Born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson
(1850-11-13)13 November 1850
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died 3 December 1894(1894-12-03) (aged 44)
Vailima, Samoan Islands
Occupation Novelist, poet, travel writer
Nationality Scottish
Citizenship United Kingdom
Education 1857 Mr. Henderson's School, Edinburgh
1857 Private tutors
1859 Return to Mr. Henderson's School
1861 Edinburgh Academy
1863 Boarding school in Isleworth, Middlesex
1864 Robert Thomson's School, Edinburgh
1867 University of Edinburgh
Period Victorian era
Notable works Treasure Island
A Child's Garden of Verses
Kidnapped
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Spouse Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne
Children Isobel Osbourne Strong (stepdaughter)
Lloyd Osbourne (stepson)
Relatives father: Thomas Stevenson
mother: Margaret Isabella Balfour

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses.

A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world.[1] His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov,[2] J. M. Barrie,[3] 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."[4]

Life

Childhood and youth

Daguerreotype portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson as a young child
Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row

Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850 to Thomas Stevenson (1818–87), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife Margaret Isabella (née Balfour; 1829–97). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, Stevenson was to change the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and in 1873 he dropped "Balfour."[5][6]

Lighthouse design was the family's profession: Thomas's father (Robert's grandfather) was the famous Robert Stevenson, and both of Thomas's brothers (Robert's uncles) Alan and David, were in the same field.[7] Indeed, even Thomas's maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family were not of the same profession. Margaret's natal family, the Balfours, were gentry, tracing their lineage back to a certain Alexander Balfour who had held the lands of Inchyra in Fife in the fifteenth century. Margaret's father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton,[8] and her siblings included the physician George William Balfour and the marine engineer James Balfour. Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder," wrote Stevenson, "what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them."[9]

Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851.[10] The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was eleven. Illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.[11] Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis[12] or even sarcoidosis.[13]

Stevenson's parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse, Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy),[14] was more fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child, and he showed a precocious concern for religion.[15] But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from Bunyan and the Bible as he lay sick in bed and telling tales of the Covenanters. Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in "The Land of Counterpane" in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885),[16] dedicating the book to his nurse.[17]

Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of seven

An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age six, a problem repeated at age eleven when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at Colinton.[18] In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, so he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, first learning at age seven or eight, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse.[19] He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father was proud of this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business."[7] He paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at sixteen, an account of the Covenanters' rebellion, which was published on its two hundredth anniversary, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 (1866).[20]

Education

In September 1857, Stevenson went to Mr Henderson's School in India Street, Edinburgh, but because of poor health stayed only a few weeks and did not return until October 1859. During his many absences he was taught by private tutors. In October 1861, he went to Edinburgh Academy, an independent school for boys, and stayed there sporadically for about fifteen months. In the autumn of 1863, he spent one term at an English boarding school at Spring Grove in Isleworth in Middlesex (now an urban area of West London). In October 1864, following an improvement to his health, he was sent to Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went to university.[21] In November 1867, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. He showed from the start no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. This time was more important for the friendships he made with other students in the Speculative Society (an exclusive debating club), particularly with Charles Baxter, who would become Stevenson's financial agent, and with a professor, Fleeming Jenkin, whose house staged amateur drama in which Stevenson took part, and whose biography he would later write.[22] Perhaps most important at this point in his life was a cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (known as "Bob"), a lively and light-hearted young man who, instead of the family profession, had chosen to study art.[23] Each year during vacations, Stevenson travelled to inspect the family's engineering works—to Anstruther and Wick in 1868, with his father on his official tour of Orkney and Shetland islands lighthouses in 1869, and for three weeks to the island of Erraid in 1870. He enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest. The voyage with his father pleased him because a similar journey of Walter Scott with Robert Stevenson had provided the inspiration for Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate.[24] In April 1871, Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters. Though the elder Stevenson was naturally disappointed, the surprise cannot have been great, and Stevenson's mother reported that he was "wonderfully resigned" to his son's choice. To provide some security, it was agreed that Stevenson should read Law (again at Edinburgh University) and be called to the Scottish bar.[25] In his 1887 poetry collection Underwoods, Stevenson muses his turning from the family profession:[26]

Say not of me that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
To play at home with paper like a child.
But rather say: In the afternoon of time
A strenuous family dusted from its hands
The sand of granite, and beholding far
Along the sounding coast its pyramids
And tall memorials catch the dying sun,
Smiled well content, and to this childish task
Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

In other respects too, Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress.[27] Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels.[28] More importantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist.[29] In January 1873, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: "Disregard everything our parents have taught us". Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents:[30]

What a damned curse I am to my parents! As my father said "You have rendered my whole life a failure". As my mother said "This is the heaviest affliction that has ever befallen me". O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world.

Early writing and travels

The author, c. 1877

In late 1873, on a visit to a cousin in England, Stevenson met two people who were to be of great importance to him, Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with a son, separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who eventually married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and over several years they kept up a heated correspondence in which Stevenson wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he came to address her as "Madonna").[31] Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and after his death was the first editor of Stevenson's letters. Soon after their first meeting, he had placed Stevenson's first paid contribution, an essay entitled "Roads," in The Portfolio.[32] Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse,[33] and Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen in turn would introduce him to a more important friend. Visiting Edinburgh in 1875, he took Stevenson with him to visit a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary, William Ernest Henley. Henley, an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg, became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888. Henley is often seen as the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.[34]

In November 1873, after Stevenson's health failed, he was sent to Menton on the French Riviera to recuperate. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that.[35] He made long and frequent trips to the neighbourhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at Barbizon, Grez-sur-Loing, and Nemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there, as well as to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres.[36] He did qualify for the Scottish bar in July 1875, and his father added a brass plate with "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate" to the Heriot Row house. But although his law studies would influence his books, he never practised law.[37] All his energies were now spent in travel and writing. One of his journeys, a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson,[38] a friend from the Speculative Society and frequent travel companion, was the basis of his first real book, An Inland Voyage (1878).[39]

Marriage

Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, c. 1876

The canoe voyage with Simpson brought Stevenson to Grez in September 1876, where he first met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914). Born in Indianapolis, she had married at age seventeen and moved to Nevada to rejoin husband Samuel after his participation in the American Civil War. That marriage produced three children: Isobel (or "Belle"), Lloyd, and Hervey (who died in 1875). But anger over her husband's infidelities led to a number of separations. In 1875 she had taken her children to France, where she and Isobel studied art.[40] Although Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote an essay, "On falling in love", for the Cornhill Magazine.[41] They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France.[42] In August 1878 Fanny returned to San Francisco, California. Stevenson at first remained in Europe, making the walking trip that would form the basis for Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). But in August 1879 he set off to join her, against the advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took second-class passage on the steamship Devonia, in part to save money but also to learn how others travelled and to increase the adventure of the journey.[43] From New York City he travelled overland by train to California. He later wrote about the experience in The Amateur Emigrant. Although it was good experience for his literature, it broke his health. He was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health.

By December 1879, Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco, where for several months he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts,"[44] in an effort to support himself through his writing. But by the end of the winter, his health was broken again and he found himself at death's door. Fanny, now divorced and recovered from her own illness, came to Stevenson's bedside and nursed him to recovery. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success."[45] When his father heard of his condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period.

Fanny and Robert were married in May 1880, although, as he said, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom."[46] With his new wife and her son, Lloyd,[47] he travelled north of San Francisco to Napa Valley and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters. He met Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which would return to him many years later. In August 1880, he sailed with Fanny and Lloyd from New York to Britain and found his parents and his friend Sidney Colvin on the wharf at Liverpool, happy to see him return home. Gradually his new wife was able to patch up differences between father and son and make herself a part of the new family through her charm and wit.

Attempted settlement in Europe and the US

Stevenson's "Cure Cottage" in Saranac Lake

For the next seven years, between 1880 and 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his state of health. He spent his summers at various places in Scotland and England, including Westbourne, Dorset, a residential area in Bournemouth. It was during his time in Bournemouth that he wrote the story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, naming one of the characters (Mr Poole) after the town of Poole, which is situated next to Bournemouth. In Westbourne he named his house Skerryvore after the tallest lighthouse in Scotland, which his uncle Alan had built (1838–1844). In the wintertime Stevenson travelled to France and lived at Davos Platz[48] and the Chalet de Solitude at Hyères, where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet for me," he wrote, "it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing—health. But though you will be angry to hear it, I believe, for myself at least, what is is best. I believed it all through my worst days, and I am not ashamed to profess it now."[49] In spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk of his best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the story which established his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods. At Skerryvore he gave a copy of Kidnapped to his friend and frequent visitor Henry James.[50]

When his father died in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate, and he started with his mother and family for Colorado. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage. During the intensely cold winter Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra, began The Master of Ballantrae, and lightheartedly planned, for the following summer, a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean. "The proudest moments of my life," he wrote, "have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders."[51]

Politics

Much like his father, Stevenson remained a staunch Tory for most of his life. His cousin and biographer, Sir Graham Balfour, said that "he probably throughout life would, if compelled to vote, have always supported the Conservative candidate."[52] In 1866, Stevenson voted for Benjamin Disraeli, future Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, over Thomas Carlyle, for the role of Lord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh.[53] During his college years he briefly identified himself as a "red-hot socialist". By 1877, at only twenty-six years of age and before having written most of his major fictional works, Stevenson reflected: "For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men [...] Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better—I dare say it is deplorably for the worse."[54]

Journey to the Pacific

Stevenson and King Kalākaua of Hawaii, c. 1889
The author with his wife and their household in Vailima, Samoa, c. 1892
Stevenson's birthday fete at Vailima, Nov. 1894
Stevenson's home at Vailima, Samoa showing him on the veranda c.1893
Burial on Mount Vaea in Samoa, 1894
Stevenson's tomb on Mt. Vaea, c. 1909

In June 1888 Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help."[55] The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he spent much time with and became a good friend of King Kalākaua. He befriended the king's niece, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who also had a link to Scottish heritage. He spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands. During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. He witnessed the Samoan crisis. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously),[56] an account of the 1888 cruise which Stevenson and Fanny undertook on the Casco from the Hawaiian Islands to the Marquesas and Tuamotu islands. An 1889 voyage, this time with Lloyd, on the trading schooner Equator, visiting Butaritari, Mariki, Apaiang and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands, (also known as the Kingsmills) now Kiribati.[57] During the 1889 voyage they spent several months on Abemama with the tyrant-chief Tem Binoka, of Abemama, Aranuka and Kuria. Stevenson extensively described Binoka in In the South Seas.[57]

One particular open letter from this period stands as testimony to his activism and indignation at the pettiness of the "powers that be", in the person of a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu named Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde. During his time in the Hawaiian Islands, Stevenson had visited Molokai and the leper colony there, shortly after the demise of Father Damien. When Dr. Hyde wrote a letter to a fellow clergyman speaking ill of Father Damien, Stevenson wrote a scathing open letter of rebuke to Dr. Hyde.[58] Soon afterwards, in April 1890, Stevenson left Sydney on the Janet Nicoll for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands.[59]

While Stevenson intended to write another book of travel writing to follow his earlier book In the South Seas, it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship as the Janet Nichol in her account of the 1890 voyage, The Cruise of the Janet Nichol.)[60] A fellow passenger was Jack Buckland, whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892), which Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together.[61][62] Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894.[63]

Last years

In 1890 Stevenson purchased a tract of about 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here, after two aborted attempts to visit Scotland, he established himself, after much work, upon his estate in the village of Vailima. He took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales", i.e. a storyteller). His influence spread to the Samoans, who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics. He was convinced the European officials appointed to rule the Samoans were incompetent, and after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, he published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson feared for a time it would result in his own deportation. When things had finally blown over he wrote to Colvin, who came from a family of distinguished colonial administrators, "I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!"[64]

The Stevensons were on friendly terms with some of the colonial leaders and their families. At one point he formally donated, by deed of gift, his birthday to the daughter of the American Land Commissioner Henry Clay Ide, since she was born on Christmas Day and had no birthday celebration separate from the family's Christmas celebrations. This led to a strong bond between the Stevenson and Ide families.[65][66]

In addition to building his house and clearing his land and helping the Samoans in many ways, he found time to work at his writing. He felt that "there was never any man had so many irons in the fire".[67] He wrote The Beach of Falesa, Catriona (titled David Balfour in the US),[68] The Ebb-Tide, and the Vailima Letters during this period.

Stevenson grew depressed and wondered if he had exhausted his creative vein as he had been "overworked bitterly".[69] He felt that with each fresh attempt, the best he could write was "ditch-water".[70] He even feared that he might again become a helpless invalid. He rebelled against this idea: "I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."[71] He then suddenly had a return of his old energy and he began work on Weir of Hermiston. "It's so good that it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed.[72] He felt that this was the best work he had done. He was convinced, "sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little ... take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time."[73]

On 3 December 1894, Stevenson was talking to his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly exclaimed, "What's that!" asking his wife "Does my face look strange?" and collapsed.[74] He died within a few hours, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was forty-four years old. The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing their Tusitala upon their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice Consul Thomas Trood.[75] Stevenson had always wanted his 'Requiem' inscribed on his tomb:[76]

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

However, the piece is misquoted in many places, including his tomb:

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief[77] which is well-known and still sung in Samoa.

Manuscripts

Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow and The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson's heirs sold Stevenson's papers during World War I; many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918.[78]

Musical compositions

Besides playing the piano and flageolet, Stevenson wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements, including solos, duets, trios and quartets for various combinations of flageolet, flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin, and piano. His works include ten songs written to his own poetry and with original or arranged melodies. In 1968 Robert Hughes arranged a number of Stevenson's works for chamber orchestra, which toured the Pacific Northwest that year.

Modern reception

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, but with the rise of modern literature after World War I, he was seen for much of the 20th century as a writer of the second class, relegated to children's literature and horror genres.[79] Condemned by literary figures such as Virginia Woolf (daughter of his early mentor Leslie Stephen) and her husband Leonard, he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools.[79] His exclusion reached a height when in the 1973 2,000-page Oxford Anthology of English Literature Stevenson was entirely unmentioned; and The Norton Anthology of English Literature excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (1st–7th editions), including him only in the 8th edition (2006).[79] The late 20th century saw the start of a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial history of the Pacific Islands, and a humanist.[79] Even as early as 1965 the pendulum had begun to swing: he was praised by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a co-originator with H. Rider Haggard of the Age of the Story Tellers.[80] He is now being re-evaluated as a peer of authors such as Joseph Conrad (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction), and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted to Stevenson.[79] Throughout the vicissitudes of his scholarly reception, Stevenson has remained popular worldwide. According to the Index Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 26th most translated author in the world, ahead of fellow nineteenth-century writers Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.[1]

Monuments and commemoration

Head of RLS, Writer's Museum, Edinburgh
Statue of Robert Louis Stevenson as a child, outside Colinton Parish Church, Scotland

The Writers' Museum off Edinburgh's Royal Mile devotes a room to Stevenson, containing some of his personal possessions from childhood through to adulthood.

Robert Louis Stevenson's former home in Vailima, Samoa is now a museum dedicated to the later years of his life. The museum collection includes several original items belonging to Stevenson and his family. The path to Stevenson's grave at the top of Mt Vaea commences from the museum.

A bronze relief memorial to Stevenson, designed by the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904, is mounted in the Moray Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.[81] Saint-Gaudens' scaled-down version of this relief is in the collection of the Montclair Art Museum.[82] Another small version depicting Stevenson with a cigarette in his hand rather than the pen he holds in the St. Giles memorial is displayed in the Nichols House Museum in Beacon Hill, Boston.[83]

Another memorial in Edinburgh stands in West Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle; it is a simple upright stone inscribed with "RLS – A Man of Letters 1850–1894" by sculptor Iain Hamilton Finlay in 1987.[84] In 2013, a statue of Stevenson as a child with his dog was unveiled by the author Ian Rankin outside Colinton Parish Church.[85] The sculptor of the statue was Alan Herriot, and the money to erect it was raised by the Colinton Community Conservation Trust.[85]

A plaque above the door of a house in Castleton of Braemar states "Here R.L. Stevenson spent the Summer of 1881 and wrote Treasure Island, his first great work".

A garden was designed by the Bournemouth Corporation in 1957 as a memorial to Stevenson, on the site of his Westbourne house, "Skerryvore", which he occupied from 1885 to 1887. A statue of the Skerryvore lighthouse is present on the site.

In 1966, the Canadian actor Lloyd Bochner played Stevenson in the episode "Jolly Roger and Wells Fargo" of the syndicated American television series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor and directed by Denver Pyle.[86]

In 1994, to mark the 100th anniversary of Stevenson's death, the Royal Bank of Scotland issued a series of commemorative £1 notes which featured a quill pen and Stevenson's signature on the obverse, and Stevenson's face on the reverse side. Alongside Stevenson's portrait are scenes from some of his books and his house in Western Samoa.[87] Two million notes were issued, each with a serial number beginning "RLS". The first note to be printed was sent to Samoa in time for their centenary celebrations on 3 December 1994.[88]

At least four US elementary schools are named after Stevenson, in the Upper West Side of New York City,[89] in Fridley, Minnesota,[90] in Burbank, California,[91] and in San Francisco, California.[92] There is an R. L. Stevenson middle school in Honolulu, Hawaii. Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, was established in 1952 and still exists as a college preparatory boarding school. Robert Louis Stevenson State Park near Calistoga, California, contains the location where he and Fanny spent their honeymoon in 1880.[93]

In 2010, Google commemorated Stevenson's 160th birthday by featuring a Google Doodle based on Treasure Island.[94][95]

In 2011, Robert Louis Stevenson's open letter defending Father Damien from Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde influenced the founding of the Saint Damien Advocates in Hawaii.[96]

Bibliography

Novels

Illustration from Kidnapped. Caption: "Hoseason turned upon him with a flash" (chapter VII, " I Go to Sea in the Brig "Covenant" of Dysart ")

Short story collections

Short stories

List of short stories sorted chronologically. Note: does not include collaborations with Fanny found in More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter.

Title Date Collection Notes
"When the Devil was Well" 1875 1921, Boston Bibliophile Society
"An Old Song" 1875 Uncollected Stevenson's first Published Fiction, in London, 1877. Anonymous. Republished in 1982 by R. Swearingen.
"Edifying Letters of the Rutherford Family" 1877 Unfinished, uncollected. Not truly a short-story. First published in 1982 by R. Swearingen.
"Will O' the Mill" 1877 The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1878
"A Lodging for the Night" 1877 New Arabian Nights (1882) First published in Temple Bar in 1877
"The Sire De Malétroits Door" 1877 New Arabian Nights, 1882 First published in Temple Bar in 1878
"Later-day Arabian Nights" 1878 New Arabian Nights, 1882 First published in London in 1878. Seven interconnected stories in two cycles: The Suicide Club (3 stories) and The Rajah's Diamond (4 stories).
"Providence and the Guitar" 1878 New Arabian Nights, 1882 First published in London in 1878
"The Story of a Lie" 1879 The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol 3, 1895 First published in New Quarterly Magazine in 1879.
"The Pavilion on the Links" 1880 With a few suppressions in New Arabian Nights, 1882 First Published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1880. Told in 9 mini-chapters. Conan Doyle in 1890 called it the first English short story.
"Thrawn Janet" 1881 The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1881
"The Body Snatcher" 1881 Edinburgh Edition, 1895 First published in the Christmas 1884 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette.
"The Merry Men" 1882 With changes in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1882.
"The Treasure of Franchard" 1883 The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in Longman's Magazine, 1883
"Markheim" 1884 The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in the Broken Shaft. Unwin's Annual., 1885
"Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" 1885 1886 Variously referred to as a short story or novella, or more rarely, a short novel.[98]
"Olalla" 1885 The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887 First published in the Court and Society Review, 1885
"The Misadventures of John Nicholson: A Christmas Story" 1885–87 Edinburgh Edition, 1897 First published in Yule Tide, 1887
"The Bottle Imp" 1891 Island Nights' Entertainments (1893) First published in Black and White, 1891
"The Beach of Falesá" 1892 Island Nights' Entertainments (1893) First published in The Illustrated London News in 1892
"The Isle of Voices" 1892 Island Nights' Entertainments (1893) First published in National Observer, 1883
"The Waif Woman" 1892 1914 First published in the Scribner's Magazine, 1914

Other works

Poetry

Travel writing

Island literature

Although not well known, his island fiction and non-fiction is among the most valuable and collected of the 19th century body of work that addresses the Pacific area.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 See the Index Translationum.
  2. ↑ Dillard, R. H. W. (1998). Introduction to Treasure Island. New York: Signet Classics. xiii. ISBN 0-451-52704-6.
  3. ↑ Chaney, Lisa (2006). Hide-and-seek with Angels: The Life of J. M. Barrie. London: Arrow Books. ISBN 0-09-945323-1.
  4. ↑ Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1913). The Victorian Age in Literature. London: Henry Holt and Co. p. 246.
  5. ↑ Mehew (2004). The spelling "Lewis" is said to have been rejected because his father violently disliked another person of the same name, and the new spelling was not accompanied by a change of pronunciation: Balfour (1901) I, 29 n. 1
  6. ↑ Furnas (1952), 23–4; Mehew (2004)
  7. 1 2 Paxton (2004)
  8. ↑ Balfour (1901), 10–12; Furnas (1952), 24; Mehew (2004)
  9. ↑ Memories and Portraits (1887), Chapter VII. The Manse
  10. ↑ "A Robert Louis Stevenson Timeline (born Nov. 13th 1850 in Edinburgh, died Dec. 3rd 1894 in Samoa)". Robert-louis-stevenson.org. Retrieved 14 May 2012.
  11. ↑ Furnas (1952), 25–8; Mehew (2004)
  12. ↑ Holmes, Lowell (2002). Treasured Islands: Cruising the South Seas with Robert Louis Stevenson. Sheridan House, Inc. ISBN 1-57409-130-1.
  13. ↑ Sharma OP (2005). "Murray Kornfeld, American College of Chest Physician, and sarcoidosis: a historical footnote: 2004 Murray Kornfeld Memorial Founders Lecture". Chest. 128 (3): 1830–35. doi:10.1378/chest.128.3.1830. PMID 16162793.
  14. ↑ "Stevenson's Nurse Dead: Alison Cunningham ("Cummy") lived to be over 91 years old" (PDF). The New York Times. 10 August 1913. p. 3.
  15. ↑ Furnas (1952), 28–32; Mehew (2004)
  16. ↑ Available at Bartleby and elsewhere.
  17. ↑ Furnas (1952), 29; Mehew (2004)
  18. ↑ Furnas (1952), 34–6; Mehew (2004). Alison Cunningham's recollection of Stevenson balances the picture of an oversensitive child, "like other bairns, whiles very naughty": Furnas (1952), 30
  19. ↑ Mehew (2004)
  20. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 67; Furnas (1952), pp. 43–5
  21. ↑ Stephenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894) – Childhood and schooling. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved: 1 August 2013.
  22. ↑ Furnas (1952), 51–54, 60–62; Mehew (2004)
  23. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 86–8; 90–4; Furnas (1952), 64–9
  24. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 70–2; Furnas (1952), 48–9; Mehew (2004)
  25. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 85–6
  26. ↑ Underwoods (1887), Poem XXXVIII
  27. ↑ Furnas (1952), 69–70; Mehew (2004)
  28. ↑ Furnas (1952), 53–7; Mehew (2004.
  29. ↑ Theo Tait (30 January 2005). "Like an intelligent hare – Theo Tait reviews Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harman". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 August 2013. A decadent dandy who envied the manly Victorian achievements of his family, a professed atheist haunted by religious terrors, a generous and loving man who fell out with many of his friends – the Robert Louis Stevenson of Claire Harman's biography is all of these and, of course, a bed-ridden invalid who wrote some of the finest adventure stories in the language. [...] Worse still, he affected a Bohemian style, haunted the seedier parts of the Old Town, read Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and declared himself an atheist. This caused a painful rift with his father, who damned him as a "careless infidel".
  30. ↑ Furnas (1952), 69 with n. 15 (on the club); 72–6
  31. ↑ Furnas (1952), 81–2; 85–9; Mehew (2004)
  32. ↑ Furnas (1952), 84–5
  33. ↑ Furnas (1952), 95; 101
  34. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 123-4; Furnas (1952) 105–6; Mehew (2004)
  35. ↑ Furnas (1952), 89–95
  36. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 128–37
  37. ↑ Furnas (1952), 100–1
  38. ↑ Author of the influential 1887 book The Art of Golf
  39. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 127
  40. ↑ Furnas (1952), 122–9; Mehew (2004)
  41. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 145–6; Mehew (2004)
  42. ↑ Furnas (1952), 130–6; Mehew (2004)
  43. ↑ Balfour (1901) I, 164–5; Furnas (1952), 142–6; Mehew (2004)
  44. ↑ Letter to Sidney Colvin, January 1880, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter IV
  45. ↑ "To Edmund Gosse, Monterey, Monterey Co., California, 8 October 1879," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter IV
  46. ↑ "To P. G. Hamerton, Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry [July 1881]," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter V
  47. ↑ Isobel by this time was married, to artist Joseph Strong.
  48. ↑ The physician who treated Stevenson there was Dr. Carl Rüedi.
  49. ↑ "To Sidney Colvin, Pitlochry, August 1881," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter V
  50. ↑ References to Skerryvore come from Leon Edel's Henry James: A Life, c. 1985, pp. 309–310
  51. ↑ "To W.E. Henley, Pitlochry, if you please, [August] 1881," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter V
  52. ↑ Terry, R. C., ed. (1996). Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections. Iowa City: U of Iowa P. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-87745-512-7.
  53. ↑ Reginald Charles Terry (1996). "Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections". p. 49. University of Iowa Press,
  54. ↑ Stevenson, Robert Louis (1907) [originally written 1877]. "Crabbed Age and Youth". Crabbed Age and Youth and Other Essays. Portland, Maine: Thomas B. Mosher. pp. 11–12.
  55. ↑ Quoted from Stevenson's diary in Overton, Jacqueline M. The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933
  56. ↑ In the South Seas (1896) & (1900) Chatto & Windus; republished by The Hogarth Press (1987). A collection of Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific
  57. 1 2 In the South Seas (1896)& (1900) Chatto & Windus; republished by The Hogarth Press (1987)
  58. ↑ "Damien Father Damien – Letter". Worldwideschool.org. Retrieved 14 May 2012.
  59. ↑ The Cruise of the Janet Nichol Among the South Sea Islands, Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1914
  60. ↑ The Cruise of the Janet Nichol among the South Sea Islands A Diary by Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson (first published 1914), republished 2004, editor, Roslyn Jolly (U. of Washington Press/U. of New South Wales Press)
  61. ↑ Hadden is described as being based upon Jack Buckland ('Tin Jack') a well-known remittance man and copra trader in Sydney. Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Ernest Mehew (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001) p. 418, n. 3
  62. ↑ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrecker, in Tales of the South Seas: Island Landfalls; The Ebb-Tide; The Wrecker (Edinburgh: Canongate Classics, 1996), ed. and introduced by Jenni Calder
  63. ↑ 'Memories of Vailima' by Isobel Strong & Lloyd Osbourne, Archibald Constable & Co: Westminster (1903)
  64. ↑ Letter to Sidney Colvin, 17 April 1893, Vailima Letters, Chapter XXVIII
  65. ↑ Taylor Erwin Gauthier (October 1923). "For Stevenson Lovers". The Rotarian. Rotary International. 23 (4): 38. ISSN 0035-838X.
  66. ↑ Ann C. Colley (2004). Robert Louis Stevenson and the colonial imagination. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-7546-3506-2.
  67. ↑ Letter to Sidney Colvin, 3 January 1892, Vailima Letters, Chapter XIV.
  68. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson – Bibliography: Detailed list of works". Retrieved 20 April 2008.
  69. ↑ Letter to Sidney Colvin, December 1893, Vailima Letters, Chapter XXXV
  70. ↑ "To W.E. Henley, [Trinity College, Cambridge, Autumn 1878]," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1, Chapter III
  71. ↑ Letter to Sidney Colvin, May 1892, Vailima Letters, Chapter XVIII
  72. ↑ Stevenson, Robert Louis (2006). Robert Allen Armstrong, ed. An Inland Voyage, Including Travels with a Donkey. Cosimo, Inc. p. xvi. ISBN 978-1-59605-823-1.
  73. ↑ "To H. B. Baildon, Vailima, Upolu [undated, but written in 1891].," The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 2, Chapter XI
  74. ↑ Balfour, Graham (1906). The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson London: Methuen. 264
  75. ↑ "Stevenson's tomb". National Library of Scotland. Retrieved 20 October 2008.
  76. ↑ "Requiem". nls.uk. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  77. ↑ Jolly, Roslyn (2009). Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific: Travel, Empire, and the Author's Profession. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 160. ISBN 0-7546-6195-4.
  78. ↑ "Bid to trace lost Robert Louis Stevenson manuscripts". BBC News. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  79. 1 2 3 4 5 Stephen Arata (2006). "Robert Louis Stevenson". David Scott Kastan (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Vol. 5: 99–102
  80. ↑ introduction to 1965 Everyman's Library edition of the one-volume The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau
  81. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial". St Giles' Cathedral. Retrieved 20 October 2008.
  82. ↑ [50.199.148.5:8081/view/objects/asitem/45/97/primaryMaker-asc?t:state:flow=92095637-f394-4ee3-9846-f82e8985400e Saint-Gaudens, Augustus (American, 1848–1907): Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887–88 (cast after 1895)], accessed 26 February 2015
  83. ↑ Petronella, Mary Melvin, ed., Victorian Boston Today: Twelve Walking Tours (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2004), p. 107.
  84. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Grove". City of Edinburgh Council. Retrieved 27 October 2013.
  85. 1 2 (27 October 2013) Robert Louis Stevenson statue unveiled by Ian Rankin BBC News Scotland, Retrieved 27 October 2013
  86. ↑ ""Jolly Roger and Wells Fargo" on Death Valley Days". Internet Movie Data Base. 23 December 1966. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  87. ↑ "Royal Bank Commemorative Notes". Rampant Scotland. Retrieved 14 October 2008.
  88. ↑ "Our Banknotes: Commemorative Banknote". The Royal Bank of Scotland. Archived from the original on 15 October 2007. Retrieved 20 October 2008.
  89. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson School". stevenson-school.org. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  90. ↑ "R. L. Stevenson Elementary School". Fridley Public Schools. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  91. ↑ "R. L. Stevenson Elementary", Burbank Unified School District. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  92. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson Elementary". robertlouisstevensonschool.org. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  93. ↑ "Robert Louis Stevenson SP". California Department of Parks and Recreation. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
  94. ↑ Gripper, Ann (13 November 2010). "Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday celebrated with Google doodle". Mirror. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  95. ↑ "Doodles Archive: November 13, 2010". Google. Retrieved 16 December 2014.
  96. ↑ "saintdamienadvocates.org". saintdamienadvocates.org. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  97. ↑ McCracken, Edd (20 March 2011). "Found: Louis Stevenson's missing masterpiece". Sunday Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
  98. ↑ Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales, Robert Louis Stevenson. Oxford World's Classics.
  99. ↑ Jones, W.B. (2003). Robert Louis Stevenson Reconsidered: New Critical Perspectives. McFarland. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-7864-1399-7. Retrieved July 9, 2016.

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