Robert Louis Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894) was a Scottish author best known for Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  Born an only child in Edinburgh into a family of lighthouse engineers on his father’s side and landed gentry on his mother’s, he was a sickly child who attended school intermittently, and was taught by private tutors.  He started telling stories before he could read, and during childhood was a compulsive story writer, publishing his first piece age 16. During vacations he traveled with his father to inspect the family’s lighthouse engineering projects, which gave him much seafaring material for his later stories.  He studied engineering and then law at University of Edinburgh before embarking on his literary career, which began in 1873 with the publication of an essay. He visited France frequently for his health and there he met an American woman, Fanny de Grift Osbourne, married with three children but separated from her husband. He travelled to and then across America to visit her in San Francisco; they were married in 1880 after her divorce.  Always battling infirmity, Stevenson lived in various English locations, in France, and in the U.S. in his thirties, seeking a compatible climate. During these years he produced his best known work.  After his father’s death in 1887 he journeyed to America and then set sail with his family in 1888 to wander the South Pacific for three years, ultimately settling on a tract of four hundred acres in the Samoan island of Upolu, where he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1894. He had become involved in local affairs and was much loved by the Samoans, who translated his epitaph into a Samoan song of grief that is sung to this day. He continues to rank among the most translated authors in the world, and was admired by many of his peers and literary successors.