ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, only child of Thomas Stevenson,
engineer and lighthouse keeper, and Margaret Balfour, daughter
of a Scots minister, was born in Edinburgh in 1850. In 1871 he
exchanged the study of engineering for the law. From 1876 he pur-
sued a full-time literary career, beginning as an essayist and travel
writer with the publication of An Inland Voyage ( 1878), Edinburgh:
Picturesque Notes ( 1878), Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
( 1879), and Virginibus Puerisque ( 1881). He is probably best remem-
bered for Treasure Island (his first widespread success, 1883),
Kidnapped ( 1886), and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ( 1886). Ill health
prompted Stevenson to travel widely on the Continent and in the
South Seas, where he settled in 1889-90 until his death in Samoa on
3 December 1894.

EMMA LETLEY has spent several years teaching Literature at the
University of Hong Kong and is currently lecturing at the
Roehampton Institute. She has edited R. L. Stevenson The Master
of Ballantrae, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, and Catriona,
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes and Selected Travel Writings
for Oxford World's Classics.

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