Robert Louis Stevenson

Born in Edinburgh in 1850 into a family of distinguished designers and engineers, Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson inherited a love of travel and adventure despite being hindered throughout his life by weak lungs, perhaps tuberculosis. Stevenson studied law at university before pursuing a full-time literary career. He spent much of his life searching for more favourable climes before settling in Samoa with his wife, where he died in 1894.