| Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. He was a sickly youth, but he did manage to attend school, where he did so well that he entered the university at sixteen. His family expected him to become a lighthouse engineer, but Robert preferred to study law. He was a young rebel; he thought that his parents' religion was an abomination and he soon became known as a bohemian, ranting against bourgeois hypocrisy. |
| When Stevenson was twenty-three, he developed a severe respiratory illness and was sent to the French Riviera to recuperate. This was the first of his many travels abroad, usually to France. In fact, many of his early writings use voyages and travels as their frameworkTreasure Island and Kidnapped, for instance. |
| It was while Stevenson was staying at Fontainebleau in 1876 (he was twenty-six) that he met Fanny Osbourne, an American woman who was separated from her husband. He fell in love with her and, much to the horror of his parents, courted her for two years. In 1878, Mrs. Osbourne returned to California and the elder Stevensons felt that perhaps their son would come to his senses and forget the "loose" American woman. They were wrong. Robert decided to follow Fanny to California. He arrived there in 1879, very ill and very poor. It was not an easy time for the young lovers. Stevenson barely managed to eke out a living and was ill much of the time. They were married early in 1880 and, about the same time, they received a telegram from Stevenson's father, relenting and offering them financial support. Soon after their marriage, the couple sailed for Scotland. |
| For some time they lived in Switzerland because of Stevenson's health, but still he suffered bouts of illness; he returned to the Scottish Highlands, but was soon critically ill with a lung |
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