Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94), the son of a Scottish engineer, was born and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Expected to follow his father into engineering, as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University, he rebelled against his parents’ wishes, declaring his intention to become a writer instead. Soon after graduating, he also openly rejected his parents’ strict Calvinist religious outlook, igniting a long disagreement between the sternly devout father and the bohemian, agnostic son that would last until the father’s death in 1887. Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis from childhood on, and spent much of his life traveling in search of a healthy climate. At the Swiss health resort of Davos in 1882 he completed Treasure Island, which was published the following year and immediately acclaimed as a classic. Another classic adventure, Kidnapped, was published in 1886, the same year as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, while Stevenson was living in the southern English resort of Bournemouth. With these three novels Stevenson established himself as one of the most popular British writers of his day; in addition to several other novels, he composed essays, poems, and nonfiction before dying of tuberculosis in 1894.
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