Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist and travel writer who abandoned the family trade of lighthouse engineering, then the law, for writing, and spent his life moving in search of a climate his lungs could bear. He wrote the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde in a few days after dreaming it, burned it when his wife objected to it, and wrote it again. He settled finally in Samoa, took the islanders' side against the colonial administration, and died there at forty-four. His books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses.