Throwback Thursday: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850. A Scottish essayist, travel writer, poet, and novelist, his most illustrious creations include Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Stevenson’s family was in the lighthouse design business. He thus studied engineering to inherit this enterprise, but swiftly found that discipline boring, so instead opted to study law. The silver lining to his abandoned engineering venture probably was meeting Charles Baxter, who later became Stevenson’s agent. Back then, literary agents were rare and radical. Now, they suck.

While studying law, Stevenson vacationed in France numerous times and befriended many artists, namely painters and writers. He graduated law school in a voraciously Bohemian mindset and decided not to practice, as Stevenson’s destiny was being a writer. Almost ironically, he was a late reader and didn’t learn how to read until the age of eight. Stevenson started writing in his adolescence, which impressed his father and impelled him to finance the printing of his first work at the ripe age of 16.

Despite feeling loyal to his family and their livelihood, Stevenson left their business in 1871, remarking, 16 years later,

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.

Seven years after leaving the family business, in 1878, Stevenson published his first volume. He entered the literary limelight when his 12-year-old stepson inspired him to think of Treasure Island, which was initially serialized in a boys’ magazine called Young Folks between 1881 and 1882, and then released as a book in 1883. The book was Stevenson’s big break as an artist.

During this time, Stevenson also wrote many short stories, and brought the trending tradition to Britain, whereas previously it was exclusively prevalent in Russia, France, and America. His short story niche genre? Adventure fiction, of course.

In 1886, Stevenson published The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, adding some adult edge to complement and diversify his existing wordmix. This book quickly became internationally renowned and since, has influenced dozens of stage productions and films.

Stevenson struggled with his health. In 1888, he and his family departed San Francisco and made way for the Pacific Islands. He frequently docked at the Hawaiian Islands and befriended King Kalākaua. A year later, they moved to and settled in Samoa, where he would die five years later, on December 3, 1894.

Stevenson insisted his work, “Requiem,” be inscribed on his tomb. Tragically and comically, to whatever extents, however, the work is misquoted on his own tomb.

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.

Now go read Chapter 1 of Treasure Island.

Until next time, Prosers, 

Prose.