Robert Stevenson

Robert Stevenson (1850–1894) was an English novelist often noted for the powers of invention and depth of psychological insight found in his work. Stevenson’s early published works, An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cervennes (1879), were based on his own adventures. it wasn’t until 1883 that his first full-length work of fiction, Treasure Island, appeared. The recognition he had received grew with the publication of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped in 1886. Stevenson’s Calvinistic upbringing and constant fight against ill-health led to the preoccupation with death and the darker side of human nature which is found in his work. Despite Stevenson’s claim that ‘fiction is to grown men what play is to the child’, he had, by the end of his life, mastered an enormous range of fiction, from historical adventure stories and swashbuckling romances to gothic-style horror stories.