Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and the Amateur Emigrant Tapa blanda - 2005

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh. In the brief span of forty-four years, dogged by poor health, he made an enormous contribution to English literature with his novels, poetry, and essays. The son of upper-middle-class parents, he was the victim of lung trouble from birth, and spent a sheltered childhood surrounded by constant care. The balance of his life was taken up with his unremitting devotion to work, and a search for a cure to his illness that took him all over the world. His travel essays were publihsed widely, and his short fiction was gathered in many volumes. His first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, was published in 1883 and brought him great fame, which only increased with the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). He followed with the Scottish romances Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888 he set out with his family for the South Seas, traveling to the leper colony at Molokai, and finally settling in Samoa, where he died.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) was born in Edinburgh and studied engineering and law, before turning to writing full time. He wrote essays, travel literature, poetry, and fiction.

Christopher MacLachlan is a senior lecturer in English at St Andrews. He has written widely on 18th-century English and Scottish literature, the Scottish Enlightenment, and modern Scottish literature.