Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement fromSidney Colvin,Andrew Lang,Edmund Gosse,[1]Leslie Stephen andW. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model forLong John Silver inTreasure Island. In 1890, he settled inSamoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in theSouth Sea islands, his writing turned fromromance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.[2]
A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he was ranked just behindCharles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.[3]
Daguerreotype portrait of Stevenson as a childStevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row
Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place,Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850 toThomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella (born Balfour, 1829–1897). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, he changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and he dropped "Balfour" in 1873.[4][5]
Lighthouse design was the family's profession; Thomas's father (Robert's grandfather) was the civil engineerRobert Stevenson, and Thomas's brothers (Robert's uncles)Alan andDavid were in the same field.[6] Thomas's maternal grandfatherThomas Smith had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family weregentry, tracing their lineage back to Alexander Balfour, who had held the lands ofInchrye in Fife in the fifteenth century.[7] His mother's father,Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of theChurch of Scotland at nearbyColinton,[8] and her siblings included physicianGeorge William Balfour and marine engineerJames Balfour. Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister," Stevenson wrote. "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 11. Illness was a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.[11] Contemporaneous views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it wasbronchiectasis[12] orsarcoidosis.[13] The family also summered in thespa town ofBridge of Allan, inNorth Berwick, and inPeebles for the sake of Stevenson's and his mother's health; "Stevenson's cave" in Bridge of Allan was reportedly the inspiration for the characterBen Gunn's cave dwelling in Stevenson's 1883 novelTreasure Island.[14]
"My second mother, my first wife. The angel of my infant life— From the sick child, now well and old, Take, nurse, the little book you hold!" Dedication of "A Child's Garden of Verses": "To Alison Cunningham. From her Boy."[15]
Stevenson's parents were both devoutPresbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence toCalvinist principles. His nurse Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy)[16] was more fervently religious. Her mix of Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child, and he showed a precocious concern for religion.[17] But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him fromJohn Bunyan and the Bible as he lay sick in bed and telling tales of theCovenanters. Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in "The Land of Counterpane" inA Child's Garden of Verses (1885),[18] dedicating the book to his nurse.[19]
Stevenson was an only child, both strange-looking and eccentric, and he found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age 6, a problem repeated at age 11 when he went on to theEdinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays atColinton.[20] 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, learning at age 7 or 8, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse,[21] and 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 had found them and had told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business."[6] He paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at 16, entitledThe Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666. It was an account of theCovenanters' rebellion and was published in 1866, the 200th anniversary of the event.[22]
Stevenson at age 7Stevenson at age 14Stevenson at age 30
In September 1857, when he was six years old, Stevenson went toMr Henderson's School in India Street, Edinburgh, but because of poor health stayed only a few weeks and did not return until October 1859, aged eight. During his many absences, he was taught by private tutors. In October 1861, aged ten, he went toEdinburgh 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 inIsleworth in Middlesex (now an urban area of West London). In October 1864, following an improvement to his health, the 13-year-old was sent to Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went to university.[23] In November 1867, Stevenson entered theUniversity of Edinburgh to study engineering. From the start he showed 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 inThe 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.[24] 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.[25]
In 1867, Stevenson's family took a lease on Swanston Cottage, in the village ofSwanston at the foot of thePentland Hills, for use as a summer holiday home. They held the lease until 1880. During their tenancy, the young Robert Louis made frequent use of the cottage, being attracted by the quiet country life and the feeling of remoteness. It is likely that the time he spent there influenced his later writing as well as his wider outlook on life, particularly his love of nature and of wild places. The house and its romantic location are thought to have inspired several of his works.[26][27]
Each year during his university holidays, Stevenson also travelled to inspect the family's engineering works. In 1868, this took him toAnstruther and for a stay of six weeks inWick, where his family was building a sea wall and had previously built a lighthouse. He was to return to Wick several times over his lifetime and included it in his travel writings.[28] He also accompanied his father on his official tour ofOrkney andShetland islands lighthouses in 1869 and spent three weeks on the island ofErraid 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 ofWalter Scott with Robert Stevenson had provided the inspiration for Scott's 1822 novelThe Pirate.[29] 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) andbe called to the Scottish bar.[30] In his 1887 poetry collectionUnderwoods, Stevenson muses on his having turned from the family profession:[31]
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 moreBohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress.[32] Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels.[33] More significantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself anatheist.[34] In January 1873, when he was 22, 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.[35] Stevenson no longer believed in God and had grown tired of pretending to be something he was not: "am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?" His father professed himself devastated: "You have rendered my whole life a failure." His mother accounted the revelation "the heaviest affliction" to befall her. "O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is", Stevenson wrote to his friend Charles Baxter, "to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world."[36]
Stevenson's rejection of the Presbyterian Church and Christian dogma, however, did not turn into lifelong atheism or agnosticism. On February 15, 1878, the 27-year-old wrote to his father and stated:[37]
Christianity is among other things, a very wise, noble and strange doctrine of life ... You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of life, and as a wisdom for this world ... I have a good heart, and believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us all ... There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't know where, to the effect that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Strange as it may seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, bringing me nearer to what I think you would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who care to look for him.
Stevenson did not resume attending church in Scotland. However, he did teach Sunday School lessons in Samoa, and prayers he wrote in his final years were published posthumously.[38]
Justifying his rejection of an established profession, in 1877 Stevenson offered "An Apology for Idlers". "A happy man or woman", he reasoned, "is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill" and a practical demonstration of "the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life". So that if they cannot be happy in the "handicap race for sixpenny pieces", let them take their own "by-road".[39]
In late 1873, when he was 23, Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England when he met two people who became very important to him: Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell andSidney Colvin. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with a son, who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a warm correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as "Madonna").[40] Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was the first editor of his letters after his death. He placed Stevenson's first paid contribution inThe Portfolio, an essay titled "Roads".[41]
Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, includingAndrew Lang,Edmund Gosse[42] andLeslie Stephen, the editor ofThe Cornhill Magazine, who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen took Stevenson to visit a patient at theEdinburgh Infirmary namedWilliam Ernest Henley, an energetic and talkative poet with a wooden leg. Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888, and he is often considered to be the inspiration forLong John Silver inTreasure Island.[43]
Stevenson was sent toMenton on theFrench Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that.[44] He made long and frequent trips to the neighbourhood of theForest of Fontainebleau, staying atBarbizon,Grez-sur-Loing andNemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there. He also travelled to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres.[45] He qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, aged 24, and his father added a brass plate to the Heriot Row house reading "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate". His law studies did influence his books, but he never practised law;[46] all his energies were spent in travel and writing. One of his journeys was a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, a friend from the Speculative Society, a frequent travel companion, and the author ofThe Art of Golf (1887). This trip was the basis of his first travel bookAn Inland Voyage (1878).[47]
Stevenson had a long correspondence with fellow ScotJ.M. Barrie. He invited Barrie to visit him inSamoa, but the two never met.[48]
The canoe voyage with Simpson brought Stevenson toGrez-sur-Loing in September 1876, where he metFanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914), born inIndianapolis. She had married at age 17 and moved toNevada to rejoin husband Samuel after his participation in theAmerican Civil War. Their children wereIsobel (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.[49] By the time Stevenson met her, Fanny was herself a magazine short-story writer of recognised ability.[50]
Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, but Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote the essay "On falling in love" forThe Cornhill Magazine.[51] They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France.[52] In August 1878, she returned to San Francisco and Stevenson remained in Europe, making the walking trip that formed the basis forTravels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). But he set off to join her in August 1879, aged 28, against the advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took a second-class passage on the steamshipDevonia, in part to save money but also to learn how others travelled and to increase the adventure of the journey.[53] He then travelled overland by train from New York City to California. He later wrote about the experience inThe Amateur Emigrant. It was a good experience for his writing, but it broke his health.
He was near death when he arrived inMonterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health. He stayed for a time at the French Hotel located at 530 Houston Street, now a museum dedicated to his memory called the "Stevenson House". While there, he often dined "on the cuff," as he said, at a nearby restaurant run by Frenchman Jules Simoneau, which stood at what is now Simoneau Plaza; several years later, he sent Simoneau an inscribed copy of his novelStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), writing that it would be a stranger case still if Robert Louis Stevenson ever forgot Jules Simoneau. While in Monterey, he wrote an evocative article about "the Old Pacific Capital" of Monterey.
By December 1879, aged 29, Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco where he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts,"[54] 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 was now divorced and recovered from her own illness, and she came to his 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."[55] When his father heard of his 28-year-old son's condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period.
Fanny and Robert were married in May 1880. She was 40; he was 29. He said that he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom."[56] He travelled with his new wife and her son Lloyd[57] north of San Francisco toNapa Valley and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp onMount Saint Helena (today designatedRobert Louis Stevenson State Park). He wrote about this experience inThe Silverado Squatters. He metCharles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of theOverland Monthly and author ofSouth Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which returned 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 friendSidney Colvin on the wharf atLiverpool, happy to see him return home. Gradually, his wife was able to patch up differences between father and son and make herself a part of the family through her charm and wit.
Stevenson's house Skerryvore in the southern English coastal town ofBournemouth where he wrote the bulk of his most popular work
Commemorative plaque in Bournemouth, where Stevenson lived between 1884 and 1887
The Stevensons shuttled back and forth between Scotland and the Continent (twice wintering inDavos)[58] before finally, in 1884, settling inWestbourne in the English south-coast town ofBournemouth. Stevenson had moved there to benefit from its sea air.[59] They lived in a house Stevenson named 'Skerryvore' after a Scottish lighthouse built by his uncle Alan.[60]
From April 1885, 34-year-old Stevenson had the company of the novelistHenry James. They had met previously in London and had recently exchanged views in journal articles on the "art of fiction" and thereafter in a correspondence in which they expressed their admiration for each other's work. After James had moved to Bournemouth to help support his invalid sister,Alice, he took up the invitation to pay daily visits to Skerryvore for conversation at the Stevensons' dinner table.[61]
Thomas Stevenson died in 1887 leaving his 36-year-old son feeling free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. Stevenson headed for Colorado with his widowed mother and family. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter in theAdirondacks at a cure cottage now known asStevenson Cottage atSaranac Lake, New York. During the intensely cold winter, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, includingPulvis et Umbra. He also beganThe Master of Ballantrae and lightheartedly planned a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean for the following summer.[62]
Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape toHazlitt, toLamb, toWordsworth, toSir Thomas Browne, toDefoe, toHawthorne, toMontaigne, toBaudelaire and toObermann.
Robert Lewis Stevenson, "Memories and Portraits", Chapter IV, relating how he practiced writing in his youth
Stevenson's critical essays on literature contain "few sustained analyses of style or content".[63] In "A Penny Plain and Two-pence Coloured" (1884) he suggests that his own approach owed much to the exaggerated and romantic world that, as a child, he had entered as proud owner of Skelt's Juvenile Drama—a toy set of cardboard characters who were actors in melodramatic dramas. "A Gossip on Romance" (1882) and "A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's" (1887) imply that it is better to entertain than to instruct.[63]
Stevenson very much saw himself in the mould of Sir Walter Scott, a storyteller with an ability to transport his readers away from themselves and their circumstances. He took issue with what he saw as the tendency in French realism to dwell on sordidness and ugliness. In "The Lantern-Bearer" (1888) he appears to takeEmile Zola to task for failing to seek out nobility in his protagonists.[63]
In "A Humble Remonstrance", Stevenson answersHenry James's claim in "The Art of Fiction" (1884) that the novel competes with life. Stevenson protests that no novel can ever hope to match life's complexity; it merely abstracts from life to produce a harmonious pattern of its own.[64]
Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality...Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing, and emasculate...The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are forced and material ... but by its immeasurable difference from life, which is designed and significant.
It is not clear, however, that in this there was any real basis for disagreement with James.[61] Stevenson had presented James with a copy ofKidnapped, but it wasTreasure Island that James favoured. Written as a story for boys, Stevenson had thought it in "no need of psychology or fine writing", but its success is credited with liberating children's writing from the "chains of Victoriandidacticism".[65]
Photographic portrait, c. 1887Bibliography frontispiece
During his college years, Stevenson briefly identified himself as a "red-hot socialist". But already by age 26 he was writing of looking back on this time "with something like regret. ... 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."[66] His cousin and biographerSir Graham Balfour claimed that Stevenson "probably throughout life would, if compelled to vote, have always supported the Conservative candidate."[67] In 1866, then 15-year-old Stevenson did vote forBenjamin Disraeli, theTory democrat and future Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, for theLord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh. But this was against a markedly illiberal challenger, the historianThomas Carlyle.[68] Carlyle was notorious for his anti-democratic and pro-slavery views.[69][70]
In "The Day After Tomorrow", appearing inThe Contemporary Review (April 1887),[71][72] Stevenson suggested: "we are all becoming Socialists without knowing it". Legislation "grows authoritative, grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts a spawn of inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of England".[73] He is referring to the steady growth in social legislation in Britain since the first of the Conservative-sponsoredFactory Acts (which, in 1833, established a professionalFactory Inspectorate). Stevenson cautioned that this "new waggon-load of laws" points to a future in which our grandchildren might "taste the pleasures of existence in something far liker an ant-heap than any previous human polity".[74] Yet in reproducing the essay his latter-day libertarian admirers omit his express understanding for the abandonment ofWhiggish,classical-liberal notions oflaissez faire. "Liberty", Stevenson wrote, "has served us a long while" but like all other virtues "she has taken wages".
[Liberty] has dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we were accustomed to admire as the benefits of freedom and common to all, were truly benefits of wealth, and took their value from our neighbour's poverty...Freedom to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently entreated, and driven to their mines and workshops by the lash of famine.[75]
In January 1888, aged 37, in response to American press coverage of theLand War in Ireland, Stevenson penned a political essay (rejected byScribner's magazine and never published in his lifetime) that advanced a broadly conservative theme: the necessity of "staying internal violence by rigid law". Notwithstanding his title, "Confessions of aUnionist", Stevenson defends neither theunion with Britain (she had "majestically demonstrated her incapacity to rule Ireland") nor "landlordism" (scarcely more defensible in Ireland than, as he had witnessed it, in the goldfields of California). Rather he protests the readiness to pass "lightly" over crimes—"unmanly murders and the harshest extremes ofboycotting"—where these are deemed "political". This he argues is to "defeat law" (which is ever a "compromise") and to invite "anarchy": it is "the sentimentalist preparing the pathway for the brute".[76]
Stevenson playing aflageolet in Hawaii ca. 1889Stevenson and KingKalākaua of Hawaii, c. 1889The author with his wife and their household inVailima, Samoa, c. 1892Stevenson's birthday fete at Vailima, November 1894Stevenson on the veranda of his home at Vailima, c. 1893Burial onMount Vaea in Samoa, 1894His tomb on Mount Vaea, c. 1909
In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yachtCasco fromSamuel Merritt 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."[77] 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 became a good friend of KingKalākaua. He befriended the king's niece PrincessVictoria Kaiulani, who also had Scottish heritage. He spent time at theGilbert Islands,Tahiti, New Zealand and theSamoan Islands. During this period, he completedThe Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wroteThe Bottle Imp. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in hisIn the South Seas (which was published posthumously).[78] He made a voyage in 1889 with Lloyd on the trading schoonerEquator, visitingButaritari, Mariki, Apaiang andAbemama in theGilbert Islands.[79] They spent several months on Abemama with tyrant-chiefTem Binoka, whom Stevenson described inIn the South Seas.[79]
Stevenson leftSydney, Australia, on theJanet Nicoll in April 1890 for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands.[80] He intended to produce another book of travel writing to follow his earlier bookIn the South Seas, but it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship in her accountThe Cruise of the Janet Nichol.)[81] A fellow passenger wasJack Buckland, whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden inThe Wrecker (1892), which Stevenson andLloyd Osbourne wrote together.[82][83] Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894.[84]
In December 1889, 39-year-old Stevenson and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and there he and Fanny decided to settle. In January 1890 they purchased314+1⁄4 acres (127.2 ha) at Vailima, some miles inland from Apia the capital, on which they built the islands' first two-storey house. Fanny's sister, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, wrote that "it was in Samoa that the word 'home' first began to have a real meaning for these gypsy wanderers".[85] In May 1891, they were joined by Stevenson's mother, Margaret. While his wife set about managing and working the estate, 40-year-old Stevenson took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales"), and began collecting local stories. Often he would exchange these for his own tales. The first work of literature in Samoan was his translation ofThe Bottle Imp (1891),[85] which presents a Pacific-wide community as the setting for a moral fable.
Immersing himself in the islands' culture, occasioned a "political awakening": it placed Stevenson "at an angle" to the rivalgreat powers, Britain,Germany and the United States whosewarships were common sights in Samoan harbours.[86][87] He understood that, as in theScottish Highlands (comparisons with his homeland "came readily"), an indigenous clan society was unprepared for the arrival of foreigners who played upon its existing rivalries and divisions. As the external pressures upon Samoan society grew, tensions soon descended into several inter-clan wars.[88]
No longer content to be a "romancer", Stevenson became a reporter and an agitator, firing off letters toThe Times which "rehearsed with an ironic twist that surely owed something to his Edinburgh legal training", a tale of European and American misconduct.[88] His concern for thePolynesians is also found in theSouth Sea Letters, published in magazines in 1891 (and then in book form asIn the South Seas in 1896). In an effort he feared might result in his own deportation, Stevenson helped secure the recall of two European officials.A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892) was a detailed chronicle of the intersection of rivalries between the great powers and the firstSamoan Civil War.
As much as he said he disdained politics—"I used to think meanly of the plumber", he wrote to his friend Sidney Colvin, "but how he shines beside the politician!"[89]—Stevenson felt himself obliged to take sides. He openly allied himself with chief Mataafa, whose rival Malietoa was backed by the Germans whose firms were beginning to monopolisecopra and cocoa bean processing.[87]
Stevenson was alarmed above all by what he perceived as the Samoans' economic innocence—their failure to secure their claim to proprietorship of the land (in aLockean sense)[90] through improving management and labour. In 1894 just months before his death, he addressed the island chiefs:[91]
There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country... if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children's, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will, in that case, be cast out into outer darkness".
He had "seen these judgments of God", not only in Hawaii where abandoned native churches stood like tombstones "over a grave, in the midst of the white men's sugar fields", but also in Ireland and "in the mountains of my own country Scotland".
These were a fine people in the past brave, gay, faithful, and very much like Samoans, except in one particular, that they were much wiser and better at that business of fighting of which you think so much. But the time came to them as it now comes to you, and it did not find them ready...
Five years after Stevenson's death, the Samoan Islands were partitioned between Germany and the United States.[92]
Stevenson wrote an estimated 700,000 words during his years on Samoa. He completedThe Beach of Falesá, the first-person tale of a Scottishcopra trader on a South Sea island, a man unheroic in his actions or his own soul. Rather he is a man of limited understanding and imagination, comfortable with his own prejudices: where, he wonders, can he find "whites" for his "half caste" daughters. The villains are white, their behaviour towards the islanders ruthlessly duplicitous.
Stevenson saw "The Beach of Falesá" as the ground-breaking work in his turn away from romance to realism. Stevenson wrote to his friendSidney Colvin:
It is the first realistic South Seas story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life. Everybody else that has tried, that I have seen, got carried away by the romance, and ended in a kind of sugar candy sham epic, and the whole effect was lost... Now I have got the smell and look of the thing a good deal. You will know more about the South Seas after you have read my little tale than if you had read a library.[93]
The Ebb-Tide (1894), the misadventures of three deadbeats marooned in theTahitian port ofPapeete, has been described as presenting "a microcosm of imperialist society, directed by greedy but incompetent whites, the labour supplied by long-suffering natives who fulfil their duties without orders and are true to the missionary faith which the Europeans make no pretence of respecting".[94] It confirmed the new Realistic turn in Stevenson's writing away from romance and adolescent adventure. The first sentence reads: "Throughout the island world of the Pacific, scattered men of many European races and from almost every grade of society carry activity and disseminate disease". No longer was Stevenson writing about human nature "in terms of a contest between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde": "the edges of moral responsibility and the margins of moral judgement were too blurred".[88] As withThe Beach of Falesà, inThe Ebb Tide contemporary reviewers find parallels with several of Conrad's works:Almayer's Folly,An Outcast of the Islands,The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'',Heart of Darkness, andLord Jim.[95][96][87]
With his imagination still residing in Scotland and returning to earlier form, Stevenson also wroteCatriona (1893), a sequel to his earlier novelKidnapped (1886), continuing the adventures of its hero David Balfour.[97]
Although he felt, as a writer, that "there was never any man had so many irons in the fire".[98] by the end of 1893 Stevenson feared that he had "overworked" and exhausted his creative vein.[99] His writing was partly driven by the need to meet the expenses of Vailima. But in a last burst of energy he began work onWeir of Hermiston. "It's so good that it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed.[100] He felt that this was the best work he had done.[101] Set in eighteenth century Scotland, it is a story of a society that (however different), like Samoa is witnessing a breakdown of social rules and structures leading to growing moral ambivalence.[88]
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?", then asked his wife, "Does my face look strange?", and collapsed.[2] (Some sources have stated that he was, instead, attempting to make mayonnaise when he collapsed.[102][103]) He died within a few hours, at the age of 44, possibly as the result of a brain haemorrhage.[104] According to research published in 2000, Stevenson might have suffered fromhereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (Osler-Rendu-Weber Syndrome). This would explain his chronic respiratory complaints, recurrent episodes of pulmonary haemorrhage, and his early death. It might also explain his mother's hitherto unreported but apparent stroke, at age 38 years.[105]
After his death, the Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing him on their shoulders to nearbyMount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice ConsulThomas Trood.[106] Based on Stevenson's poem "Requiem",[107] the following epitaph is inscribed on his tomb:[108][109]
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 the sea And the hunter home from the hill
Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epitaph was translated to a Samoan song of grief.[110] The requiem appears on the eastern side of the grave. On the western side the biblical passage of Ruth 1:16–17 is inscribed:
Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: And thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God: Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.[111]
The ensign flag draped over his coffin in Samoa was returned to Edinburgh and now resides in a glass case over the fireplace of rooms in Edinburgh University's Old College owned byThe Speculative Society, of which he was a member.[112]
Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those ofTreasure Island,The Black Arrow andThe Master of Ballantrae. His heirs sold his papers during World War I, and many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918.[113]
Stevenson was seen for much of the 20th century as a second-class writer. He became relegated to children's literature and horror genres,[117] condemned by literary figures such asVirginia Woolf (daughter of his early mentorLeslie Stephen) and her husbandLeonard Woolf, and he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools.[117] His exclusion reached its nadir in the 1973 2,000-pageOxford Anthology of English Literature where he was entirely unmentioned, andThe Norton Anthology of English Literature excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (1st–7th editions), including him only in the eighth edition (2006).[117]
Portrait in 1893 by Barnett
The late 20th century brought 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 colonialhistory of the Pacific Islands and a humanist.[117] He was praised byRoger Lancelyn Green, one of the OxfordInklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a pioneer of the Age of the Story Tellers along withH. Rider Haggard.[118] He is now evaluated as a peer of authors such asJoseph Conrad (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction) andHenry James, with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted to him.[117] Throughout the vicissitudes of his scholarly reception, Stevenson has remained popular worldwide. According to theIndex Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 26th-most-translated author in the world, ahead ofOscar Wilde andEdgar Allan Poe.[119]
On the subject of Stevenson's modern reputation, American film criticRoger Ebert wrote in 1996,
I was talking to a friend the other day who said he'd never met a child who liked reading Robert Louis Stevenson'sTreasure Island.
Neither have I, I said. And he'd never met a child who liked reading Stevenson'sKidnapped. Me neither, I said. My early exposure to both books was via theClassics Illustrated comic books. But I did read the books later, when I was no longer a kid, and I enjoyed them enormously. Same goes for Stevenson'sDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
TheWriters' Museum near Edinburgh'sRoyal Mile devotes a room to Stevenson, containing some of his personal possessions from childhood through to adulthood.
A bronze relief memorial to Stevenson, designed by the American sculptorAugustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904, is mounted in the Moray Aisle ofSt Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.[121] Saint-Gaudens' scaled-down version of this relief is in the collection of theMontclair Art Museum.[122] 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 theNichols House Museum inBeacon Hill, Boston.[123]
In the West Princes Street Gardens belowEdinburgh Castle a simple upright stone is inscribed: "RLS – A Man of Letters 1850–1894" by sculptorIan Hamilton Finlay in 1987.[124] In 2013, a statue of Stevenson as a child with his dog was unveiled by the authorIan Rankin outsideColinton Parish Church.[125] The sculptor of the statue was Alan Herriot, and the money to erect it was raised by the Colinton Community Conservation Trust.[125]
Stevenson's house Skerryvore, at the head ofAlum Chine, was severely damaged by bombs during a destructive and lethal raid in theBournemouth Blitz. Despite a campaign to save it, the building was demolished.[126] A garden was designed by the Bournemouth Corporation in 1957 as a memorial to Stevenson, on the site of hisWestbourne house, "Skerryvore", which he occupied from 1885 to 1887. A statue of theSkerryvore lighthouse is present on the site. Robert Louis Stevenson Avenue in Westbourne is named after him.[127]
The small hotel in Wick where Stevenson stayed in the summer of 1868 is now called Stevenson House and is marked by a plaque. The house is near the harbour, in the part of Wick known as Pultneytown.[28]
In 1994, to mark the 100th anniversary of Stevenson's death, theRoyal 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.[128] 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.[129]
In 2024, it was announced a Jekyll and Hyde–themed sculpture would be built near where Skerryvore once stood.[130]
TheStevenson House at 530 Houston Street inMonterey, California, formerly the French Hotel, memorialises Stevenson's 1879 stay in "the Old Pacific Capital", as he was crossing the United States to join his future wife, Fanny Osbourne. The Stevenson House museum is graced with abas-relief depicting the sickly author writing in bed.
Spyglass Hill Golf Course, originally called Pebble Beach Pines Golf Club, was renamed "Spyglass Hill" bySamuel F. B. Morse (1885–1969), the founder of Pebble Beach Company, after a place in Stevenson'sTreasure Island. All the holes at Spyglass Hill are named after characters and places in the novel.
The Robert Louis Stevenson Museum in St. Helena, California, is home to over 11,000 objects and artifacts, the majority of which belonged to Stevenson. Opened in 1969, the museum houses such treasures as his childhood rocking chair, writing desk, toy soldiers and personal writings among many other items. The museum is free to the public and serves as an academic archive for students, writers and Stevenson enthusiasts.
InSan Francisco there is an outdoorRobert Louis Stevenson Memorial inPortsmouth Square. In 2024, there was controversy about the San Francisco statue. Jenny Leung, executive director of theChinese Culture Center, stated "There were a lot of vocal opinions about how ... Robert Louis Stevenson had nothing to do with Chinatown. A lot of those comments."[131]
Stevenson's former home inVailima, Samoa, is now a museum dedicated to the later years of his life. TheRobert Louis Stevenson Museum presents the house as it was at the time of his death along with two other buildings added to Stevenson's original one, tripling the museum in size. The path to Stevenson's grave at the top ofMount Vaea starts at the museum.[139]
The Chemin de Stevenson (GR 70) is a popular long-distance footpath in France that approximately follows Stevenson's route as described inTravels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. There are numerous monuments and businesses named after him along the route, including a fountain in the town ofSaint-Jean-du-Gard where Stevenson sold his donkey Modestine and took a stagecoach toAlès.[140]
Stevenson paces in his dining room in an 1885 portrait byJohn Singer Sargent. His wife Fanny, seated in an Indian dress, is visible in the lower right corner.
Alternate portrait in 1893 by Barnett, subtly different from the more familiar shot.
Illustration fromKidnapped. Caption: "Hoseason turned upon him with a flash" (chapter VII, "I Go to Sea in the Brig "Covenant" of Dysart")
The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth (1877) – unfinished and unpublished.[141] An annotated edition of the original manuscript, edited and introduced by Roger G. Swearingen, was published asThe Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza in August 2014.
Treasure Island (1883) – his first major success, a tale ofpiracy, buried treasure andadventure; has been filmed frequently. In an 1881 letter to W. E. Henley, he provided the earliest-known title, "The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: a Story for Boys".
Prince Otto (1885) – Stevenson's third full-length narrative, an action romance set in the imaginary Germanic state of Grünewald.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) – a novella about adual personality; much adapted in plays and films; also influential in the growth of understanding of the subconscious mind through its treatment of a kind and intelligent physician who turns into apsychopathic monster after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality.
Kidnapped (1886) – a historical novel that tells of the boy David Balfour's pursuit of his inheritance and his alliance withAlan Breck Stewart in the intrigues ofJacobite troubles in Scotland.
Fables (1896) (20 stories: "The Persons of the Tale", "The Sinking Ship", "The Two Matches", "The Sick Man and the Fireman", "The Devil and the Innkeeper", "The Penitent", "The Yellow Paint", "The House of Eld", "The Four Reformers", "The Man and His Friend", "The Reader", "The Citizen and the Traveller", "The Distinguished Stranger", "The Carthorses and the Saddlehorse", "The Tadpole and the Frog", "Something in It", "Faith, Half Faith and No Faith at All", "The Touchstone", "The Poor Thing" and "The Song of the Morrow")
South Sea Tales (1996) (6 stories: "The Beach of Falesá", "The Bottle Imp", "The Isle of Voices", "The Ebb-Tide: A Trio and Quartette", "The Cart-Horses and the Saddle-Horse" and "Something in It")
First published inLondon in 1878. Three interconnected stories: "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts", "Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk" and "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab". Part of theLater-day Arabian Nights.
First published inLondon in 1878. Four interconnected stories: "Story of the Bandbox", "Story of the Young Man in Holy Orders", "Story of the House with the Green Blinds" and "The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective". Part of theLater-day Arabian Nights.
First Published inThe Cornhill Magazine in 1880. Told in 9 mini-chapters. Later included with a few suppressions inNew Arabian Nights.Conan Doyle in 1890 called it the first English short story.
Unfinished. First published by the Boston Bibliophile Society, 1921. Later completed byAlasdair Gray.
"The Misadventures of John Nicholson"
1887
Tales and Fantasies, 1905
Novella. With the subtitle: "A Christmas Story". First published inYule Tide, 1887
"The Clockmaker"
1880s
Uncollected
One of two fables not included in the 1896 collection.[144]
"The Scientific Ape"
1880s
Uncollected
One of two fables not included in the 1896 collection.
"The Enchantress"
1889
Uncollected
First published in the Fall 1989 issue ofThe Georgia Review.
"Adventures of Henry Shovel"
1891
Uncollected
Unfinished. First published in theVailima Edition, Vol. 25. Published alongside three other short fragments: "The Owl", "Cannonmills" and "Mr Baskerville and His Ward".
Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers (1881), contains the essaysVirginibus Puerisque i (1876);Virginibus Puerisque ii (1881);Virginibus Puerisque iii: On Falling in Love (1877);Virginibus Puerisque iv: The Truth of Intercourse (1879);Crabbed Age and Youth (1878);An Apology for Idlers (1877);Ordered South (1874);Aes Triplex (1878);El Dorado (1878);The English Admirals (1878);Some Portraits by Raeburn (previously unpublished);Child's Play (1878);Walking Tours (1876);Pan's Pipes (1878);A Plea for Gas Lamps (1878).
Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) containingPreface, by Way of Criticism (not previously published);Victor Hugo's Romances (1874);Some Aspects of Robert Burns (1879);The Gospel According to Walt Whitman (1878);Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions (1880);Yoshida-Torajiro (1880);François Villon, Student, Poet, Housebreaker (1877);Charles of Orleans (1876);Samuel Pepys (1881);John Knox and his Relations to Women (1875).
The New Lighthouse on the Dhu Heartach Rock, Argyllshire (1995) – based on an 1872 manuscript, edited by R. G. Swearingen. California. Silverado Museum.
Sophia Scarlet (2008) – based on an 1892 manuscript, edited by Robert Hoskins. AUT Media (AUT University).
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885) – written for children but also popular with their parents. Includes such favourites as "My Shadow" and "The Lamplighter". Often thought to represent a positive reflection of the author's sickly childhood.
Underwoods (1887), a collection of poetry written in both English andScots
Ballads (1891) – includes "Ticonderoga: A Legend of the West Highlands" (1887), based on a famous Scottish ghost story, and "Heather Ale", arguably Stevenson's most famous poem
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1878) - apaean to his birthplace, it provides Stevenson's personal introduction to each part of the city and some history behind the various sections of the city and its most famous buildings.
The Silverado Squatters (1883). An unconventional honeymoon trip to an abandoned mining camp inNapa Valley with his new wife Fanny and her son Lloyd. He presciently identifies theCalifornia wine industry as one to be reckoned with.
Across the Plains (written in 1879–80, published in 1892). Second leg of his journey, by train from New York to California (then picks up withThe Silverado Squatters). Also includes other travel essays.
The Amateur Emigrant (written 1879–80, published 1895). An account of the first leg of his journey to California, by ship from Europe to New York. Andrew Noble (From the Clyde to California: Robert Louis Stevenson's Emigrant Journey, 1985) considers it to be his finest work.
The Old and New Pacific Capitals (1882). An account of his stay in Monterey, California in August to December 1879. Never published separately. See, for example, James D. Hart, ed.,From Scotland to Silverado, 1966.
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.
In the South Seas (1896). A collection of Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific.
^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.
^Sharma, O. P. (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.PMID16162793.
^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.
^Balfour (1901) I, 86–8; 90–4; Furnas (1952), 64–9
^Grant, Will.Pentland Days and Country Ways. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons. pp. 177–189. Based on a paper presented to the R.L. Stevenson Club on 10 October 1929.
^Watt, Lauchlan MacLean (1914).The Hills of Home. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
^Theo Tait (30 January 2005)."Like an intelligent hare – Theo Tait reviews Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harman".The Telegraph.Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved4 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".
^Colvin, Sidney, ed. (1917).The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. 1: 1868–1880. New York: Scribner's.pp. 259–260.
^Stevenson, Robert Louis (8 December 1912)."Prayers written at Vailima". New York, : C. Scribner's sons. Retrieved8 December 2022 – via Internet Archive.
^abO'Hagan, Andrew (2020)."Bournemouth".The London Review of Books.42 (10).ISSN0260-9592.Archived from the original on 1 November 2020. Retrieved4 November 2020.
^"To W.E. Henley, Pitlochry, if you please, [August] 1881,"The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 1,Chapter V
^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.
^Reginald Charles Terry (1996). "Robert Louis Stevenson: Interviews and Recollections". p. 49. University of Iowa Press,
^Goldberg, David Theo (2008). "Liberalism's Limits: Carlyle and Mill on "the Negro Question',"Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Vol. XX, No. 2, pp. 203–216.
^Stevenson, Robert Louis (1921).Confessions of a Unionist. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Privately Printed by G.G. Winchip.Archived from the original on 15 August 2021. Retrieved27 October 2020.
^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
^abIn the South Seas (1896)& (1900) Chatto & Windus; republished by The Hogarth Press (1987)
^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)
^Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Ernest Mehew (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2001) p. 418, n. 3
^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
^'Memories of Vailima' by Isobel Strong & Lloyd Osbourne, Archibald Constable & Co: Westminster (1903)
^Theroux, A. (2017).Einstein's Beets. Mersion: Emergent Village Resources for Communities of Faith Series (in German). Fantagraphics Books. p. 507.ISBN978-1-60699-976-9.Archived from the original on 10 March 2023. Retrieved10 March 2023.
^"Top 50 Authors".Index Translationum. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.Archived from the original on 12 June 2014. Retrieved17 January 2019.
^[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
Callow, Philip (2001).Louis: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Constable.ISBN0-09-480180-0.
John Jay Chapman, "Robert Louis Stevenson", inEmerson, and Other Essays. New York: AMS Press, 1969,ISBN0-404-00619-1 (reprinted from the edition of 1899)
Hammond, J. R.A Robert Louis Stevenson Chronology, Macmillan Press, 1997.ISBN978-0-333-63888-0
Hubbard, Tom (1996), "Debut at Antwerp: TheFlanders Chapters of Robert Louis Stevenson'sAn Inland Voyage, in Hubbard, Tom (2022),Invitation to the Voyage: Scotland, Europe and Literature, Rymour, pp. 48 - 52,ISBN9-781739-596002
Hubbard, Tom (2009), "Writing Scottishly on Non-Scottish Matters", in Hubbard, Tom (2022),Invitation to the Voyage: Scotland, Europe and Literature, Rymour, pp.135 - 138,ISBN9-781739-596002
Mintz, Steven.A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture, New York University Press, 1983.
Shaw, Michael (ed.),A Friendship in Letters: Robert Louis Stevenson & J.M. Barrie, Sandstone Press, Inverness, 2020,ISBN978-1-913207-02-1
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