Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish author, essayist, poet, and travel writer. He was born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson on November 13, 1850, and died on December 3, 1894. The books Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped, and A Child's Garden of Verses are among his best known. Stevenson, who was born and had his education in Edinburgh, had severe bronchial problems for much of his life, despite which he produced a large body of work and travelled abroad. He was inspired by Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen, and W. E. Henley as a young man when mingling in intellectual circles in London. The last author may have served as a model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. He moved to Samoa in 1890, when his work shifted away from romance and adventure literature and toward a harsher reality out of concern for the growing influence of Europe and America on the South Sea islands. Stevenson abruptly yelled, ""What's that?,"" then questioned his wife, ""Does my face seem strange?,"" before collapsing on December 3, 1894, as he struggled to open a bottle of wine while chatting with his wife. He suffered a stroke at the age of 44, and died a few hours later.
