INTRODUCTION
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Few writers of our own generation have been so well known or have so appealed to the personal affections of their readers as Robert Louis Stevenson. Our intimate knowledge of his life is due in part to the degree to which he put his experiences into his books, in part to the sympathy and admiration aroused by his plucky fight to do his work under the heavy odds of ill health. To his personal acquaintances he was lovable because of his brilliancy, his high-mindedness, his humor and his broad sympathies; to his readers he was lovable because he carried these qualities into his writings.
He was born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850. His grandfather, his father and several of his uncles were builders of lighthouses. Of their ability, their sterling qualities of character, and their eccentricities he has told in his essay, A Family of Engineers. Upon reading this paper one can see whence came many of Stevenson's own characteristics: his love of thoroughness in his work, his chivalric devotion to truth, and his quaint humor. Of his father, particularly, it is said that he was serious, painstaking, with a touch of daring and a fondness for the out-of-doors life, and a power of saying things in picturesque fashion. His mother came of a famous old Scotch family, the Balfours. She was bright and vivacious, and a tactful hostess. Between mother and son a strong attachment existed up to the end of his life. After the death of his father she accompanied him in his pursuit of health, first to America and then to the islands of the Pacific.
He was a precocious and imaginative child. And his memories of his childhood, of his plays and games, and especially of the
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