R.L. Stevenson (1850—1894)

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The boy was often ill and during the cold winters stayed in the house.

He had no brothers or sisters. Books were his only friends. Robert read a lot. He thought about other countries and drew maps of places he wanted to see. The boy wrote stories of adventures on the sea and told those stories to his parents.

In summer, when Robert was not ill, he travelled around Scotland with his father. He saw storms at sea and later described them in his stories. At school, he began to write stories and poems and wanted to be a writer. But his father was an engineer and wanted his son to be an engineer too. He said that writing poems and stories was only a hobby, not a profession.

Stevenson went to Edinburgh University for some time. Then he travelled to different countries and wrote many stories. In 1883 Stevenson published his book “Treasure Island.” Readers liked the book very much. In 1886 Stevenson published his book “Kidnapped.” Then other books of adventures came out. People in many countries read and still read Stevenson’s stories. The hobby of a small boy was now his profession. But the writer was very ill and he died in 1894.