Robert Louis Stevenson Biography

Fast Facts

• Attended Edinburgh University, where he studied Engineering and Law, although by the time he graduated in 1875 he knew he wanted to be a writer
• His first published work was a travel essay, titled "Roads," which appeared in The Portfolio in December 1873
• Quote: "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go․ I travel for travel's sake․ The great affair is to move․"
• Quote: "We are in such a haste to be doing, to be writing, to be gathering gear, to make our voices audible a moment in the derisive silence of eternity, that we forget that one thing, of which these are but parts - namely to live!"
• Is credited with helping to establish the short story writing form in Britain, which had become popular in places like America and France a few decades earlier but had not yet caught on in his home country
• Best known as a nineteenth century novelist, poet, and historian who wrote "Treasure Island" and "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde․"
• The concept for "Treasure Island" came from a map that he drew to entertain his stepson in the summer of 1881 while the family was trapped inside due to rainy weather
• As of 2013, there have been 134 different film adaptations of "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde․"
• At his request, he was buried at the top of Mount Vaea in Samoa overlooking his home, with his short poem "Requiem" providing his tomb's inscription: "Under the wide and starry sky,/ Dig the grave and let me lie․"
• Many of his early works were accounts of his travels to various parts of the world, including "The Silverado Squatters," in which he and his wife, Fanny, spend their honeymoon at an abandoned silver mine in California