Biography of Robert Louis Stevenson

(1850-11-13 - 1894/12/03)

Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
Scottish writer

He was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh. Raised in the bosom of a wealthy family, his father was an engineer, studied engineering at the University of his native city.
From his childhood he felt inclination for literature. Was his nanny who instilled in him the love of reading, telling stories while he was bedridden due to his ongoing illness.
Influenced by the narrative of Sir Walter Scott, many of his stories are set in the middle ages but perhaps is the Pacific literary space that explored with greater enjoyment. Sick from tuberculosis, he was forced to travel continuously in search of climates suitable to his delicate state of health.
His first published writings are descriptions of some of these trips. Inland voyage (1878), has a canoe tour through France and Belgium who had performed in 1876, and rides a donkey by the Cevannes (1879) the vicissitudes of a journey on foot through the mountains in the South of France, in 1878. His subsequent travels led him, in a boat of migrants to California (1879-1880), where, in 1880, married the American divorcee Fanny Osbourne. Another one of them consisted of a pleasure Cruiser for the South Pacific(1889) to the Samoan Islands, where he and his wife remained until 1894, in a last-ditch effort to restore the health of the writer.
It became one of the great storytellers of the 19th century and their stories, from adventures to fantastic novels, have entertained young and not so young from generation to generation. He wrote at least three masterpieces: the treasure island, the black arrow and the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In two of them created two separate characters that have become archetypes of European literature Gallery: Long John Silver, the wily pirate in whose dark plans there is always a drop of humanity that ends up winning the hearts of readers; and the Dr. Jekyll, the Sage who lives apart from everything and that falls into the temptation to faustica of the most dangerous sensations and so I create another without moral or emotional barriers.
His novels include David Balfour and Weirde (1886), the black arrow (1888) and the Lord of Ballantree (1889). The unfinished Herminston of Weir (1896), is considered his masterpiece, as the fragments that remain contain some of the most beautiful passages he wrote. It proved to be a great essayist in Virginibus puerisque (1881), studies of men and books (1882) and memories and portraits (1887). His books of autobiographical journeys, as the solitary House (1883), where he told his impressions about staying in a mining camp in California, across the Plains (1892) and southern islands (1896) were also well received by critics. Some of his best poems are collected in the Garden of verses for children (1885) volume. Among other books of poems published highlights back to the sea (1887). Wonderful stories (1882) and the devil in the bottle and other stories (1893) are collections of short stories. Along with his adopted son, the writer Lloyd Osbourne, wrote the novels the wrong box (1889) and the hangover (1892).
Robert Louis Stevenson died the Vailima, Samoa, on December 3, 1894, with 44 years of a cerebral hemorrhage, being buried at the top of a mountain, near Vailima, their Samoan home. The natives gave him the name of Tusitala (' which tells stories').