Robert Louis Stevenson is often noted for the powers of invention and depth of psychological insight found in his work. Born in Edinburgh in 1850, Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was the son of a prosperous civil engineer. Choosing law as a compromise, Stevenson attended Edinburgh University but instead chose to lead a bohemian existence. Stevenson’s early published works, An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes (1879), based on his own adventures, were followed by a constant stream of articles and essays. In 1883 his first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, appeared. The recognition Stevenson had received from Treasure Island grew with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped in 1886. Settling in Samoa, he gained a reputation as a story-teller and adopted the native name Tusitala. During the morning of 3 December 1894, while conversing with his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine, he collapsed and died within a few hours, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage, at the age of 44.
