From a critically acclaimed biographer, an engrossing narrative of Robert Louis Stevenson-s life, a story as romantic and adventurous as his fiction Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is famed for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he published many other novels and stories before his death at forty-four. Despite lifelong ill health, he had immense vitality; Mark Twain said his eyes burned with -smoldering rich fire.- Born in Edinburgh to a family of lighthouse engineers, Stevenson set many stories in Scotland but sought travel and adventure in a life as romantic as his novels. -I loved a ship,- he wrote, -as a man loves burgundy or daybreak.- The adventures were shared with his free-spirited American wife, Fanny, with whom he moved to the South Pacific. Samoan friends named Stevenson -Storyteller.- Reading, he said, -should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves.- His own books have been transl
