60 Fun Facts About Robert Louis Stevenson

What was the family profession that Stevenson's father, grandfather and uncles all followed?

His grandfather Robert Stevenson built the Bell Rock light, and his uncle Alan built Skerryvore, the name Louis later gave his Bournemouth house.

At about what age did Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson change 'Lewis' to 'Louis'?

He dropped 'Balfour', his mother's maiden name, in 1873.

At which Edinburgh address was Stevenson born on 13 November 1850?

The family moved to a damp house at Inverleith Terrace in 1851 and then to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when he was six.

To whom did Stevenson dedicate A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)?

'Cummy' read him Bunyan and the Bible and told tales of the Covenanters; her fervent Calvinism was also an early source of his nightmares.

Stevenson's first publication, printed at his father's expense when he was 16, was an account of what?

The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 appeared in 1866, on the rebellion's 200th anniversary.

What subject did Stevenson enrol to study at the University of Edinburgh in 1867?

He showed no enthusiasm and devoted his energy to avoiding lectures; the debating Speculative Society mattered far more to him.

Having abandoned his first degree, Stevenson qualified in July 1875 for what?

His father added a brass plate reading 'R.L. Stevenson, Advocate' to the Heriot Row house, but he never practised law.

In 1873 Stevenson's father discovered the constitution of a society his son belonged to, beginning 'Disregard everything our parents have taught us.' What was it called?

The letters stood for Liberty, Justice, Reverence; the discovery led Stevenson to admit he no longer believed in God, and his father declared his life 'a failure'.

Which magazine editor took Stevenson to visit hospital patient William Ernest Henley?

Henley became a close friend and is often considered the model for Long John Silver, until a quarrel ended the friendship in 1888.

Stevenson's first travel book, An Inland Voyage (1878), recounts a journey by what means through Belgium and France?

His companion was Sir Walter Simpson, later author of The Art of Golf.

What was the name of the donkey in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes?

He sold her at Saint-Jean-du-Gard; the book is among the first to treat hiking and camping as recreation and describes one of the first sleeping bags.

In which French village did Stevenson meet his future wife Fanny Osbourne in September 1876?

She was an American magazine writer, ten years his senior, separated from an unfaithful husband and studying art with her daughter.

Stevenson crossed the Atlantic in 1879 to join Fanny aboard the Devonia. How did he travel?

He chose it partly to save money and partly to see how others travelled, an experience he wrote up in The Amateur Emigrant; the journey broke his health.

Ranchers in which California town nursed Stevenson back to health after crossing America?

He lodged at the French Hotel, later the Stevenson House museum, and dined 'on the cuff' at Jules Simoneau's restaurant.

How old were Fanny and Louis when they married in May 1880?

He described himself as 'a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom'.

Where did the newlyweds spend their honeymoon, described in The Silverado Squatters?

The site in the Napa Valley is now Robert Louis Stevenson State Park.

Stevenson named his Bournemouth house 'Skerryvore' after what?

He lived there from 1884 to 1887, 'like a weevil in a biscuit', and wrote most of his most popular work; the house was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War.

Which American novelist paid daily visits to Skerryvore for dinner-table conversation from 1885?

They had traded views on 'the art of fiction' in print; Stevenson gave him Kidnapped, but James preferred Treasure Island.

What was the original title of Treasure Island?

It was serialised in Young Folks in 1881–82 under the pseudonym 'Captain George North' before Cassell published it as a book in November 1883.

Under what pseudonym was Treasure Island first serialised in the magazine Young Folks?

The magazine version ran from 1881 to 1882 as Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola.

Treasure Island began in the summer of 1881 as a way to amuse whom during bad weather at Braemar?

He drew a map of an island and built the story around it, writing to a friend that 'if this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day'.

What is the name of the inn where Treasure Island opens and where Billy Bones lodges?

Jim Hawkins is the innkeeper's son; the blind beggar Pew later delivers the black spot there.

Who captains the Hispaniola on the voyage to Treasure Island?

He rightly distrusts the crew Squire Trelawney hired; first mate Mr Arrow, a drunkard, is lost overboard in a storm.

Which marooned former pirate on Treasure Island has a craving for cheese?

He had already dug up most of Flint's treasure and hidden it in his cave; a cave at Bridge of Allan is said to have inspired his home.

Long John Silver's parrot is named after which dead pirate captain?

Flint, who buried the treasure, had captained a ship called the Walrus.

Treasure Island 'came out of' which Charles Kingsley book, where Stevenson found the Dead Man's Chest?

He also drew on Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates and admitted borrowing freely from earlier authors.

What is the profession of Gabriel John Utterson in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

He and his cousin Enfield are on their weekly walk when they pass the mysterious door that begins the story.

According to Stevenson's 'A Chapter on Dreams', where did the idea for Jekyll and Hyde come from?

The dream gave him 'three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary'.

What did Stevenson reportedly do with the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde after Fanny criticised it?

He then rewrote the whole story in three to six days; scholars debate whether the burning really happened.

Which MP does Mr Hyde beat to death with a cane in Jekyll and Hyde?

Half the broken cane is left at the scene, and Utterson recognises it as one he had given Jekyll.

Roughly how many copies of Jekyll and Hyde were sold in the six months after publication in January 1886?

The American edition appeared four days before Longmans' British one; by 1901 US sales were estimated at over 250,000.

Which real 18th-century killing in the Highlands is woven into the plot of Kidnapped?

David Balfour witnesses the shooting of Colin Roy Campbell, the 'Red Fox', and flees with the real-life Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart.

What is the first name of the miserly uncle who has David kidnapped in Kidnapped?

He lives on 'parritch' and small ale in the ruinous House of Shaws, and greets his nephew with a loaded blunderbuss.

What is the name of the brig on which David is carried off in Kidnapped?

It runs aground on the Torran Rocks, and David is washed ashore on Erraid, an island where Stevenson had spent three weeks in 1870.

What is the title of the 1893 sequel to Kidnapped?

It continues the adventures of David Balfour and was the last of Stevenson's 'rebellion novels'.

Which yacht did Stevenson charter in San Francisco in June 1888 for his first Pacific voyage?

He later sailed on the trading schooner Equator to the Gilbert Islands and on the Janet Nicoll from Sydney in 1890.

Which Hawaiian monarch became Stevenson's good friend during his Pacific wanderings?

He also befriended the king's niece Princess Kaiulani, who shared his Scottish heritage.

What game did Stevenson teach the girls at the leper colony on Molokaʻi in 1889?

He brought the set with him, stayed a week, and afterwards had a piano shipped to them from Honolulu.

At which estate near Apia did the Stevensons build Samoa's first two-storey house?

They bought 314 acres in January 1890 for the property, which later became a museum.

What does 'Tusitala', the Samoan name Stevenson took, mean?

He collected local stories and exchanged them for his own; his translation of The Bottle Imp was the first work of literature in Samoan.

Which of Stevenson's stories became the first work of literature in the Samoan language?

His 1891 translation presented a Pacific-wide community as the setting for a moral fable.

Which Samoan chief did Stevenson openly support against the German-backed Malietoa?

His letters to The Times attacked European and American misconduct, and he helped secure the recall of two officials.

Stevenson's 1892 chronicle of great-power rivalry and the first Samoan Civil War was titled what?

Its subtitle was Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa; five years after his death the islands were partitioned between Germany and the United States.

Which unfinished novel set in 18th-century Scotland did Stevenson think his best work?

'It's so good that it frightens me,' he is reported to have said of the book he was working on when he died.

What was Stevenson doing when he collapsed and died on 3 December 1894?

He asked his wife 'Does my face look strange?' and died within hours, aged 44, probably of a brain haemorrhage; some sources say he was making mayonnaise.

On which mountain did the Samoans bury Stevenson, carrying his body up on their shoulders?

His epitaph, from his poem 'Requiem', is carved on the tomb overlooking the sea, and Ruth 1:16–17 is inscribed on the other side.

Which art-student cousin was a key influence on the young Louis?

Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson was a fellow member of the LJR club; Charles Baxter became Louis's financial agent.

The Wrong Box (1889) and The Wrecker (1892) were co-written with whom?

The Wrong Box, a comedy about a tontine, was filmed in 1966 with John Mills, Ralph Richardson and Michael Caine.

Which sculptor designed the 1904 bronze relief memorial to Stevenson in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh?

A scaled-down version is in the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.

Which writer, later famous for Peter Pan, corresponded with Stevenson for years but never met him?

Stevenson invited him to Samoa, but the visit never happened.

Where in New York State did Stevenson spend the bitter winter of 1887–88 at a cure cottage?

He wrote 'Pulvis et Umbra' there, began The Master of Ballantrae and planned his South Seas cruise.

As of 2018 Stevenson ranked as the world's 26th-most-translated author, just behind whom?

He was excluded from the Norton Anthology of English Literature from 1968 until 2006 before his reputation recovered.

When Stevenson was six, his family moved to which sunnier Edinburgh address?

The move came after a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace had worsened the sickly child's coughs and fevers.

From 1867 to 1880 the Stevensons leased a summer cottage in which village at the foot of the Pentland Hills?

The young Louis loved the quiet country life and remoteness there, which likely influenced his writing.

In 1868 Stevenson spent six weeks in which Caithness town, where his family built a sea wall?

The small hotel where he stayed was renamed Stevenson House and bears a plaque near the harbour in Pultneytown.

Fanny Sitwell, whom Stevenson met in 1873 and adored, later married which of his mentors?

Sitwell was a 34-year-old separated mother who attracted the devotion of many who met her; she and Colvin wed in 1901.

In which Riviera town was Stevenson sent to recuperate in November 1873 after his health failed?

He returned in better health in April 1874 and later made long trips to Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing near Fontainebleau.

In The Lantern-Bearers (1888), Stevenson appears to take which French novelist to task?

He disliked French realism's dwelling on sordidness and saw himself as a storyteller in the mould of Sir Walter Scott.

Stevenson's novel Prince Otto (1885) is set in which imaginary Germanic state?

It was his third full-length narrative, an action romance that came between Treasure Island and Kidnapped.

Which author completed Stevenson's unfinished novel St Ives after his death?

Roughly half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of Treasure Island and The Master of Ballantrae.