Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist and poet, born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers. Chronically ill with lung disease, he spent much of his life traveling in search of a healthier climate, and wrote travel books, essays and A Child's Garden of Verses before Treasure Island (1883) made him famous. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped followed in 1886, and Catriona, the sequel to Kidnapped, in 1893. In 1890 he settled with his American wife in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, teller of tales, and where he died suddenly at forty-four, leaving Weir of Hermiston unfinished.