Stevenson, Robert Louis ___ 1850-1894 ___ British ___ writer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, the only son of a prosperous engineer (working with lighthouses) and the daughter of a clergyman. He suffered tuberculosis while still young, and was looked after by an attentive nanny who told him many stories. When 16, his family published a pamphlet he had written called 'The Pentland Rising'. He studied engineering at Edinburgh University, and wrote a paper on lighthouses, but, thereafter, trained for the law while all the time writing essays and short stories. He spent some time travelling in his late 20s. One canoe tour of France and Belgium was written up as 'An Inland Voyage', and his diary of a walking tour was published as 'Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes'. While in France he met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, a married woman with two children. They both went to the US, where she obtained a divorce, and they married in 1879. During a brief stay in Silverado with her, he wrote a journal which, back in England, he used for 'The Silverado Squatters'. Stevenson found fame in the early 1880s with 'Treasure Island', and other great books - such as 'Kidnapped' and 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' - followed. From the late 1880s, he lived with his family on an estate he had purchased at Vailima in Samoa. He died of a brain haemorrhage when relatively young.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Stevenson's visit to Tuvalu

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1878 1880 ___ travel US France

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext - Travels with a Donkey
etexts
etexts

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Huntington Library
Silverado Museum

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Silverado Squatters
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.