- His father, grandfather and uncles were all Lighthouse engineers. His grandfather even designed them. In fact, Robert himself set out at first to follow the same profession. He studied engineering at university, but his heart wasn't in it, even though he won a silver medal for an article called On a New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses. He visited lighthouses during the holidays but enjoyed the visits, not because he could study the lighthouses, but because the locations inspired his writing. In the end, he ditched engineering in favour of writing, taking a law degree as a backup in case he needed to earn Money.
- He was a storyteller from the start. He didn't learn to read until he was seven, but at six, he was dictating stories to his mother.
- As a teenager, his nickname was “Velvet Jacket” because he dressed like a dandy in a velveteen coat and wide-brimmed hat.
- He loved travelling. In fact, he began his career as a travel writer going on adventures and writing about them. One such adventure was hitch-hiking through France with a Donkey called Modestine. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes was one of his first books.
- He might have invented the sleeping bag. In Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes he describes the sleeping sack he took with him - made of "green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within".
- He was musical, too. He played the Piano and flageolet and wrote more than 100 original musical compositions including setting some of his own poetry to Music.
- During his travels, he met an unhappily married American woman called Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne who was 11 years older than him and had two children. The two started an affair in France. Later, when Fanny went back to America, he followed her, turning the trip into another adventure – booking the cheapest passage, not only to save money but for the experience. However, the trip nearly killed him twice. He was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health. The last leg of the journey and the fact he had little money and was living on 45 cents a day, made him mortally ill again. This time, Fanny, now divorced, came and nursed him back to health. Robert's health problems took their toll on his teeth. He had them all removed in San Francisco and was fitted with a set of wooden falsies.
- Fanny was one of his greatest critics at times. When he gave her his draft of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, she hated it and threw it on the Fire. Robert disagreed with her, though – he'd thought it was one of his best works, and spent the next three days in bed re-writing it. The public disagreed with Fanny, too – the book sold 40,000 copies in Britain in its first six months on sale in 1886.
- He and Fanny moved to Samoa where the climate was better for Robert's health. While there, he gave his birthday away. The recipient was a 12 year old girl called Annie, who was the daughter of the US Commissioner to Samoa. She hated the fact that her actual birthday was on Christmas Day. Robert used his legal training to write a long, legal letter transferring his birthday, November 13, to Annie.
- He died at the age of 44 from a stroke brought on by straining to open a bottle (accounts differ as to whether the bottle in question contained mayonnaise or Wine). The Samoans all loved him and he was buried there with great ceremony. His tomb is inscribed with a poem, including the words: “Home is the sailor, home from sea,/And the hunter home from the hill.” The Samoans turned his epitaph into a song of grief, which is still sung there today.
Quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson
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