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Robert
Louis Stevenson
(1850-1894)
Writer
A sickly and imaginative only child, Lewis (later Louis) turned
off the family career path of engineering to study law, but writing
was always his first love. Travels abroad to escape the Edinburgh
cold gave him material for his writing, and it was on a trip to
France that he met his future wife, an American divorc6e with
two young children. Almost all of Stevenson’s most famous
work was written after his marriage: Treasure Island was written
in 1882 for Lloyd, his stepson. Kidnapped and Catriona followed,
but it was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which explored
the duality of good and evil present in all his works, that shot
him to fame in 1886. With his family and mother he eventually
left Scotland for good, ultimately settling on Samoa in the South
Seas. He was writing Weir of Hermiston at the time of his death;
unfinished, it remains his masterpiece.
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