Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who “seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins“, as G. K. Chesterton put it. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson’s popularity and allow him a place in the canon.

He was born in Edinburgh, but was not over-fond of the city named “Auld Reekie.” The author of such classics as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde far preferred the wide open spaces, such as the Highlands, far way from the town that exacerbated his ill health.

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