Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1. The famous Scotch author, Robert Louis Stevenson, was born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850. He was a delicate child with a sweet temper and a happy, unselfish disposition, who bore the burden of ill health bravely in childhood as in later life. In "The Land of Counterpane," a poem which you may remember, he tells some of the ways in which he amused himself during the idle days in bed.
2. When he was well enough to be up, he invented games for himself and took keen delight in the world of outdoor life.
3. His education was carried on in a somewhat irregular fashion. He attended schools in Edinburgh, and studied with private tutors at places to which his parents had gone for the benefit of his health or of their own. He thus became an excellent linguist, and gained wide knowledge of foreign life and manners. He early showed a taste for literature, beginning as a boy the careful choice of language which made him a master of English prose.
4. Stevenson's father had planned to have him follow the family profession of engineering. With this in view he was sent to Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1868. Later he gave up engineering and attended law classes; but law, like engineering, was put aside to enable him to fulfil his strong desire for a literary life.
5. His first stories and essays, published in various magazines, met with favorable notice. In 1878 he published his first book, "An Inland Voyage," the account of a canoe trip with a friend.