Robert Louis Stevenson was bom on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland. A semi-invalid as a child, he suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life. He rebelled against his puritanical Scottish Calvinist upbringing, becoming an agnostic and adapting a bohemian way of life as a young man.

After studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1875 but never practiced the profession. Instead, he turned to literature, publishing essays noted for their polished style and personal charm in Cornhill Magazine and other periodicals.

Despite his precarious health, or perhaps in defiance of it, he led an adventurous life, hiking, canoeing, and wandering around France and Belgium.

He recounted these adventures in two travel books, An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), that revealed his romantic temperament and an interest in picturesque history, people, and places.

In love with Frances Osbourne, a...