Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novel writer, poet, essayist and travel author. His best-known works include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
A literary celebrity during his lifetime, Stevenson now ranks among the 26 most translated writers in the world. He has been greatly admired by many writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Marcel Schwob, Vladimir Nabokov, J. Barrie, and G. 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.
(Robert Louis Stevenson photo #2)
Stevenson started life Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850, to Thomas Stevenson , a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife, the former Margaret Isabella Balfour. Lighthouse design was the family profession: Thomas's own dad was the famous Robert Stevenson, and his maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, and brothers Alan and David were also among those in the business. On Margaret's side, the family were gentry, tracing their name back to an Alexander Balfour, who held the lands of Inchrye in Fife in the fifteenth century. Her dad, Lewis Balfour , was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton, and Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his house. Now I often wonder, created Stevenson, what I inherited from this old minister.
Robert Louis Stevenson
