Stevenson, Robert Louis

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894), was a Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet. He became one of the world’s most popular writers. His exciting adventure stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped have long appealed to both children and adults. His essays and travel books are considered models of sophisticated English prose style. The tender, simple poems collected in A Child’s Garden of Verses are masterpieces of children’s literature.

Stevenson’s life was as varied and fascinating as his work. He fought illness constantly, writing many of his best books from a sickbed. He traveled widely for his health and to learn about people. He spent his last years on the South Sea island of Samoa. The Samoans honored him with the title Tusitala (Teller of Tales).

Stevenson’s life

Early life.

Stevenson was born on Nov. 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His full name was Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. He later adopted the name Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a sickly boy who suffered from a lung disease that later developed into tuberculosis. Young Stevenson loved the open air, the sea, and adventure, but he also loved to read. He preferred literature and history, especially Scottish history, which supplied the background for many of his novels.

When he was 17, Stevenson entered Edinburgh University to study engineering, his father’s profession. Stevenson’s father, Thomas Stevenson, designed the Stevenson Screen in 1864. This device was used to house meteorological thermometers. The young Stevenson himself gave up engineering for law. He passed his bar examination in 1875. But he did not enjoy law and never practiced it. His real love was writing.

Stevenson began publishing short stories and essays in the mid-1870’s. His first book, An Inland Voyage, appeared in 1878. It relates his experiences during a canoeing trip through France and Belgium. In Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), Stevenson describes a walking tour through part of France. Both books reveal Stevenson’s inexperience as a writer. But they gave signs of the graceful, charming essay style for which he was to become famous.

Marriage.

In 1876, Stevenson met Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman who was studying art in Paris. Although she was 11 years older than Stevenson and had a son and daughter, Stevenson fell in love with her. In 1879, he followed her to San Francisco in spite of the opposition of his parents. They were married in Oakland in 1880, after her divorce. The long journey from Europe to California severely affected Stevenson’s frail health. To speed his recovery, he moved his family to a rough mining camp in the mountains near Calistoga, California. Stevenson described his experiences there in The Silverado Squatters (1883).

The Stevensons returned to Scotland in 1880. For the next seven years, they moved through Europe from one resort to another, hoping that a change of air would improve Stevenson’s health. In 1887, Stevenson returned with his family to the United States. There, he entered a sanitarium at Saranac Lake, New York.

The South Seas.

For Stevenson, the sea had always been bracing. When his health improved, he boldly decided to sail a yacht to the South Seas—that is, the South Pacific Ocean. He left San Francisco with his wife, widowed mother, and stepson in June 1888. For the next six years, he traveled through the South Sea islands. He came to know the life of the islanders better than any writer of his time.

Eventually, Stevenson decided to settle in the South Seas. It was the one place that seemed to promise some lasting improvement in his health. He bought some forest land near Apia, Samoa, and built a large house, which he called Vailima (Five Rivers). He became a planter and took an active part in island affairs. Stevenson’s kindness, understanding, and tolerance gained the affection of the Samoans. They built a road to his house which they called The Road of the Loving Heart.

Tragedy clouded Stevenson’s last years when his wife became mentally ill. This misfortune moved him deeply, affecting his ability to complete his last books. Stevenson’s life was beginning to brighten when his wife partially recovered, but he died suddenly of a stroke on Dec. 3, 1894. Local chiefs buried him on top of Mount Vaea. His gravestone is inscribed with his own poem “Requiem.” Its concluding lines make a fitting epitaph for a gallant adventurer:

Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter, home from the hill.

Stevenson’s writings

Novels.

In 1881, Stevenson amused his stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, with a little tale about pirates and the buried treasure of Captain Kidd. It grew into Treasure Island, Stevenson’s first and most famous novel. The story, first published in a boy’s magazine, was revised for book publication in 1883. The boy hero Jim Hawkins, the two villains Long John Silver and blind Pew, and the hair-raising search for the buried treasure have become familiar to millions of readers.

With the publication of Stevenson’s second major novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), his reputation was assured. The story tells of a doctor who takes a drug that changes him into a new person, physically ugly and spiritually evil. The novel is a psychological inquiry into the nature of the evil that exists in all people. The book brilliantly anticipates much modern psychological fiction. It is one of the most fascinating horror stories ever written.

Stevenson also published Kidnapped, his best long novel, in 1886. Based on considerable historical research, it weaves an exciting fictional story around an actual Scottish murder committed in 1745. The novel displays Stevenson’s matchless ability to create adult entertainment out of the materials of children’s adventure stories. Because of the novel’s length, Stevenson ended Kidnapped before the plot was completed. He finally finished the story in 1893 with a sequel, David Balfour (published in England as Catriona).

The Master of Ballantrae (1889) is set against the background of Scotland’s revolt against England in the 1740’s. The novel tells a story of bitter hatred between two brothers. The Master of Ballantrae begins as a promising psychological study, but suffers from its melodramatic ending.

Stevenson’s later novels, far different from his early light-hearted romances, are often bitter in tone. Less popular, they still have merit. Stevenson described his short novel The Beach of Falesa (1892) as “the first realistic South Sea story.” It was called “art brought to a perfection” by novelist Henry James.

Stevenson wrote three other novels, in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne—The Wrong Box (1889), The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb Tide (1894). Stevenson also left two novels unfinished at his death. St. Ives, which was completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, describes the adventures of a French prisoner in the United Kingdom in 1813. Weir of Hermiston, a story of Scotland in the 1700’s, promised to be Stevenson’s finest novel.

Other writings.

Stevenson wrote many short stories. Some were collected into New Arabian Nights (1882) and More New Arabian Nights (1885). Many of the short stories are rich in imagination and fantasy, though the early ones are often written in an artificial style.

Stevenson’s concern with prose style is most apparent in his essays, which are among the finest in the English language. His observations on people and manners are marked by a delicate fancy. For charm and perceptiveness, they can be compared only to the essays of Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt. Stevenson’s most memorable essays were collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881), Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882), and Memories and Portraits (1887).

Stevenson wrote several travel books later in his career. The Amateur Emigrant (1880, 1895) describes his voyages to the United States. Across the Plains (1892) tells of his trip from New York to San Francisco. In the South Seas (1890) contains his reflections on his Pacific voyages. All demonstrate Stevenson’s extraordinary stylistic quality—the sudden word or phrase that lights a page with meaning.

Stevenson also composed some delightful letters and wrote several volumes of poetry. He collaborated with William Ernest Henley on some unsuccessful dramas. A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885) reveals the world of a child’s imagination with a deceptive simplicity that still holds appeal for readers young and old. Popular poems in this collection include “The Lamplighter” and “My Shadow.” Stevenson’s adult poetry, however, is almost totally ignored today, in spite of occasional pieces of considerable merit.

Stevenson’s place in literature

Stevenson was both the most popular and the most successful among writers of the late 1800’s who developed romance as a reaction to the literary movements of Realism and Naturalism. If his influence has declined today, it is not necessarily because modern writers are more skillful, but rather that Stevenson’s optimistic view of life has become unfashionable.

Stevenson insisted that novels are to adults what play is to children. He believed that one of the legitimate and necessary functions of literature is to supply adventure for people who lead unexciting lives. A theory of fiction seemingly so limited and naive might well have produced literary trifles. In fact, it resulted in art of such high quality that the disciplined Henry James once praised Stevenson as “the only man in England who can write a decent English sentence.”

Stevenson’s faults are obvious. His plots are a bit melodramatic, his pirates rather stagy, and, as he readily admitted, his heroines entirely unreal. However, his sure handling of narrative pace, his strong sense of atmosphere, and above all his masterly command of style give his novels and stories enduring vitality.

The reading public has never lost its admiration for Stevenson. It appears likely that as long as there is a taste for romance written with artistry, he will continue to have an audience. Furthermore, there are signs that critics are reevaluating his works, finding more fine shades of meaning in his writings than they had suspected.