Robert Louis Stevenson
1850–1894
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Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer whose fragile health kept him traveling in search of kinder climates. He found his greatest success with adventure: Treasure Island (1883), with its one-legged Long John Silver, practically invented the modern pirate story.
In 1886 he published two very different books: Kidnapped, a historical adventure set in the Scottish Highlands, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. That chilling fable of the divided self entered the language as shorthand for a double life.
Seeking relief from tuberculosis, he eventually settled in Samoa, where he died in 1894 at just 44. The Samoans, who called him "Tusitala" — teller of tales — buried him on a mountaintop overlooking the sea.
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