Robert Louis Stevenson died in Samoa on this day in 1894.
The Scottish novelist, poet and traveller Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. After considering professions in law and engineering, he pursued his interest in writing. A prolific literary career ensued, which included Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886). Stevenson travelled extensively to America and the South Seas, settling in Samoa in 1890, and getting involved in life and politics there. In the tropical climate, his imagination turned to Edinburgh, and he wrote Catriona (1893), a sequel to Kidnapped. At his death he left an unfinished masterpiece Weir of Hermiston, set in 19th-century Edinburgh and the Lammermuirs.
