English Robert Louis Stevenson, full name ( Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson)
Robert Stevenson
short biography
An English writer of Scottish origin, the largest figure of national neo-romanticism, a recognized master of the adventure genre, a poet - was born in Edinburgh on November 13, 1850. His father was a hereditary engineer, his mother was a representative of an old family. Bronchial disease suffered in early childhood significantly reduced life expectancy.
Stevenson's first published work is in 1866; Robert Lewis wrote it as a teenager and printed it for his father's money. It was a historical essay "The Pentland Rebellion". Stevenson received his education at the Edinburgh Academy, from 1871 to 1875 - at the University of Edinburgh, at the Faculty of Law. Having received a lawyer's diploma after graduation, he, nevertheless, did not engage in practical activities in the field of jurisprudence.
During the years 1873-1879. he lived mainly in France, and the source of income was the modest earnings of a writer who was just starting his career in literature, but showed promise. Kayak trips along the rivers of the country allowed him to accumulate impressions, which he set out in a book published in 1878. The first work of an adult Stevenson was a series of essays called "Journey inland". In 1882, his "Etudes on well-known people and books" were published. The genre of essays, essays, very fashionable and popular in his time, he never left, although works of a completely different kind brought him fame.
In 1880, Stevenson was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which forced him to move to a more favorable climate for the organism. Having visited Southern France, Switzerland, England, and America, Stevenson and his family traveled around the South Pacific Ocean - both in order to improve their health and to collect materials for the next essays. Having visited the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, Australia, they decided to settle in Samoa for a long time.
The local climate turned out to be healing for Stevenson, in any case, the works that brought him world fame and made him a classic of the genre were written here. In 1883, the novel "Treasure Island" appeared - a recognized masterpiece of adventure literature. Subsequently, the novels "Kidnapped" (1886), "The Owner of Ballantra" (1889) appeared, which strengthened his fame as a master of an entertaining plot, the psychological accuracy of drawing images. In 1893, a collection of short stories was published under the title Evening Conversations on the Island. Poetry collections also came out from under his pen - "Children's Flower Garden of Poems" (1885), "Ballads" (1890). Until the end of his life he remained an essayist and publicist. Very promising, according to researchers, Stevenson's last novel, Wear Hermiston, remained unfinished. Death found Robert Louis Stevenson in Polynesia, on the island of Uplow on December 3, 1894. A stroke put an end to his biography. The inhabitants of the island, who were admirers of his talent, made a grave on the top of the mountain.
Biography from Wikipedia
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson Born November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, in the family of a hereditary engineer, a specialist in lighthouses. He received his secondary education at the Edinburgh Academy, higher education at the University of Edinburgh, where he first studied as an engineer, in 1871 he received a silver medal at the competition of the Scottish Academy for his work “A new type of flashing light for lighthouses”, but then moved to the Faculty of Law, which he graduated from 1875. Having received the name Robert Lewis Balfour at baptism, at the age of 18 he dropped Balfour (mother's maiden name) in his name, and also changed the spelling from Lewis to Louis. The conservative Thomas Stevenson is said to have disliked a liberal named Lewis and decided to write the name of his son (who was almost never called Robert in the family) in French but pronounced in English.
At the age of three, he fell ill with croup, which led to serious consequences. According to most biographers, Stevenson suffered from a severe form of pulmonary tuberculosis (according to E. N. Caldwell, who referred to the opinions of doctors who treated or examined the writer, a severe bronchial disease).
In his youth, he wanted to marry Kat Drummond, a singer from a night tavern, but did not do this under pressure from his father.
The first book, essay “Pentland Rebellion. A Page of History, 1666, a pamphlet published in a print run of one hundred copies with his father's money, was published in 1866 (even then Stevenson's great interest in the history of his native Scotland showed itself). In 1873, the essay "The Road" was published, which had a simply symbolic title (despite his illness, Stevenson traveled a lot). Three years later, together with his friend William Simpson, he kayaked along the rivers and canals of Belgium and France. In the French village of Barbizon, which became the center of the Barbizon School of Art, founded by the late Theodore Rousseau, where young English and American artists came to the urban community thanks to the railroad from Paris, Stevenson met Frances (Fanny) Matilda Osborne. This married woman, who was ten years older than Stevenson, was fond of painting and therefore was among the artists. Together with her, a sixteen-year-old daughter (the future stepdaughter Isabelle Osborne, who later wrote Stevenson's works from dictation) and a nine-year-old son (the future stepson and co-author of the writer Lloyd Osborne) came to Barbizon.
Returning to Edinburgh, Stevenson published a book of essays, A Journey Inland (1878). The year before, he had published his first work of fiction in Temple Bar magazine, the short story "François Villon's Bed and Breakfast". In 1878, while again in France, Stevenson wrote cycles of stories "Suicide Club" and "Raja's Diamond" combined by one hero, which from June to October under the title "Modern One Thousand and One Nights" are published in the London magazine. Four years later, a series of stories (under the title "The New Thousand and One Nights") manages to be published as a separate book.
Having finished the stories about Prince Florizel (Florisel, Prince of Bohemia - by the way, one of the heroes of Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale"), Stevenson made another trip - to the places where the French Protestants waged a guerrilla war. In June 1879, he published the book Traveling with a Donkey (the donkey carrying the luggage was his only companion). At the beginning of the 20th century, young writers called this book “A Journey with Sidney Colvin,” disapproving of the way a close friend of the late Stevenson prepared for publication a four-volume edition of the latter’s letters, which he subjected to real censorship.
In August 1879, Stevenson received a letter from California from Fanny Osborne. This letter has not survived; it is assumed that she reported her serious illness. When he arrived in San Francisco, he did not find Fanny there; exhausted by a long and difficult trip, the writer had to go to Monterey, where she moved. On May 19, 1880, Stevenson married Fanny in San Francisco, who managed to divorce her husband. In August, with her and her children, he sailed from New York to Liverpool. On the ship, Stevenson wrote the essays that made up the book The Amateur Emigrant, and when he returned, he wrote the story House on the Dunes.
Stevenson has long wanted to write a novel, even tried to start, but all his plans and attempts did not lead to anything. Watching his stepson draw something, his stepfather got carried away and made a map of the invented island. In September 1881, he began writing a novel that he originally wanted to call The Ship's Cook. He read what he wrote to his family. Stevenson's father suggested to his son that Billy Bones' chest and a barrel of apples be included in the book.
When the owner of the children's magazine Young Folks got acquainted with the first chapters and the general idea, he began to publish the novel in his magazine from October (under the pseudonym "Captain George North" and not on the front pages). In January 1882, the publication of Treasure Island ended, but did not bring success to the author. Many indignant letters came to the editorial office of the magazine. The first book edition was published (already under the real name) only in November 1883. The circulation did not sell out immediately, but the success of the second edition, as well as the third, illustrated, was undeniable. "Treasure Island" (Treasure Island) brought Stevenson worldwide fame (the first Russian translation was made in 1886), became an example of a classic adventure novel. In 1884-1885, Stevenson wrote for Young Folks the historical adventure novel The Black Arrow (book edition was published in 1888, Russian translation - 1889). Stevenson's novel "Prince Otto" (Prince Otto) was published in book form in 1885 (Russian translation - 1886), in the same year a collection of short stories "And another thousand and one nights" ("Dynamite") was released.
Stevenson did not take his poems seriously for a long time and did not offer them to publishers. However, having married, returning from the United States to his homeland, he composed 48 poems, caused by childhood memories, compiled a collection of "Whistles" (Penny Whistles), printed a few copies for friends in the printing house (among Stevenson's friends were Henry James, Scottish writer Samuel Crocket) and stopped there. He returned to poetry a few years later, when he was very ill, revised the collection and released it in 1885 under a different name. The collection, published here in 1920 (and in an abbreviated form) as "Children's Flower Garden of Poems" (there are other Russian translations of the title), has become a classic of English poetry for children. Two years later, Stevenson released a second poetry collection (already for adults) and called it "Underwood" (Underwoods), borrowing this name from Ben Jonson. “My poems are not a forest, but an undergrowth,” he himself explained, “but they have meaning and can be read.”
In 1885, Stevenson read F. M. Dostoyevsky's novel Crime and Punishment in French translation. The impression was reflected in the story "Markheim", from where it was not far to the fantastic-psychological story "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde", published in January of the following year.
Already in May, the first chapters of Kidnapped (Russian translation - 1901), a new adventure novel, appeared on the pages of Young Folks. “Two works, so different in their essence, rarely came out from the pen of the same author, even in much longer periods of time,” wrote Stevenson researcher Stephen Gwynn. In the same year, 1886, a book edition was published. The protagonist of "Kidnapped" is David Balfour (a memory of maternal ancestors who, according to family tradition, belonged to the MacGregor clan, like Walter Scott's Rob Roy).
In 1887, The Merry Men, and Other Tales, a collection of short stories, was published, which included stories from 1881-1885, including "Markheim" and the very first of the Scottish stories, "Cursed Janet".
The following year, Stevenson and his family set off to travel the South Seas. At the same time, he wrote the novel "The Master of Ballantrae", which was published in 1889 (The Master of Ballantrae, Russian translation - 1890).
From 1890 Stevenson lived in Samoa. At the same time, the collection "Ballads" was released; In Russia, the ballad "Heather Honey" translated by Samuil Marshak is very popular.
On the islands of Samoa, a collection of stories was written "Evening conversations on the island" (Island Night's Entertainments, 1893, Russian translation 1901), a continuation of the "Kidnapped" "Catriona" (Catriona, 1893, in a magazine publication - "David Balfour", Russian translation - 1901), St. Ives (St. Ives, completed after Stevenson's death by Arthur Quiller-Kuch, 1897, Russian translation - 1898). All of these (as well as previous) novels are distinguished by a combination of exciting adventurous plots, deep insight into history and subtle psychological study of characters. Stevenson's last novel, Weir of Hermiston (1896), which the author counted on as his best book, remained unfinished.
Together with his stepson Lloyd Osborne, Stevenson wrote novels from modern life, The Wrong Box (1889, Russian translation - 2004), The Wrecker (1892, Russian translation - 1896, this novel was especially appreciated by Jorge Luis Borges ), "Ebb Tide" (The Ebb-Tide, 1894).
Stevenson's works were translated into Russian by Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Jurgis Baltrushaitis, Vladislav Khodasevich, Osip Rumer, Ignaty Ivanovsky, Ivan Kashkin, Korney Chukovsky. Leonid Borisov wrote a novel about him "Under the flag of Ekaterin".
Stevenson died on December 3, 1894 of a stroke on the island of Upolu in Samoa. From morning until evening he wrote "Weir Hermiston", reaching almost to the middle. Then he went down to the living room, trying to entertain his wife, who was in a gloomy mood. We were going to supper, Stevenson brought a bottle of Burgundy. Suddenly he grabbed his head and shouted: “What is the matter with me?” By the beginning of the ninth, he was no longer alive. The Samoans, who called Stevenson Tusitala (“the storyteller”; the writer told them, for example, the story of the satanic bottle, later reflected in the fairy tale from the collection “Evening Conversations on the Island”), raised him, covered with the British flag, to the top of Mount Weah, where he buried. The grave has been preserved, above it is a rectangular concrete tombstone.
is an English writer of Scottish origin. representative of English neo-romanticism
Born in Edinburgh November 13, 1850. His father was a hereditary engineer, his mother was a representative of an old family.
Stevenson wrote his first work in 1866 - this is a historical essay "The Pentland Rebellion".
Stevenson received his education at the Edinburgh Academy, from 1871 to 1875 - at the University of Edinburgh, at the Faculty of Law. Having received a lawyer's diploma after graduation, he, nevertheless, did not engage in practical activities in the field of jurisprudence.
During the years 1873-1879. he lived mainly in France, and the source of income was the modest earnings of a writer who was just starting his career in literature, but showed promise. Kayak trips along the rivers of the country allowed him to accumulate impressions, which he set out in a book published in 1878. The first work of an adult Stevenson was a series of essays called "Journey inland". In 1882, his "Etudes on well-known people and books" were published.
In 1880, Stevenson was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which forced him to move to a more favorable climate for the organism. Having visited Southern France, Switzerland, England, and America, Stevenson and his family traveled around the South Pacific Ocean - both in order to improve their health and to collect materials for the next essays. Having visited the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, Australia, they decided to settle in Samoa for a long time.
The local climate turned out to be healing for Stevenson, in any case, the works that brought him world fame and made him a classic of the genre were written here. In 1883, the novel “ Treasure Island"- a recognized masterpiece of adventure literature. Subsequently, the novels "Kidnapped" (1886), "The Owner of Ballantra" (1889) appeared, which strengthened his fame as a master of an entertaining plot, the psychological accuracy of drawing images. In 1893, a collection of short stories was published under the title Evening Conversations on the Island. Poetry collections also came out from under his pen - "Children's Flower Garden of Poems" (1885), "Ballads" (1890). Until the end of his life he remained an essayist and publicist. Very promising, according to researchers, Stevenson's last novel, Wear Hermiston, remained unfinished.
Robert Lewis Stevenson (born Robert Louis Stevenson, originally Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson) is an English writer and poet, originally a Scot, author of world-famous adventure novels and short stories, the largest representative of English neo-romanticism.
Robert Stephenson was born in Edinburgh, the son of a hereditary engineer, a specialist in lighthouses. At baptism he received the name Robert Lewis Balfour. He studied first at the Edinburgh Academy, then at the Faculty of Law of the University of Edinburgh, from which he graduated in 1875. At the age of 18, he abandoned the word Balfour in his name, and in the word Lewis changed the spelling from Lewis to Louis (without changing the pronunciation).
He traveled a lot, although from childhood he suffered from a severe form of tuberculosis. From 1890 he lived on the islands of Samoa. The first book, The Pentland Rebellion, was published in 1866. The novel Treasure Island (1883, Russian translation, 1886), a classic example of adventure literature, brought worldwide fame to the writer. This was followed by historical adventure novels, the novels “Prince Otto” (“Prince Otto” 1885, Russian translation 1886), “Kidnapped” (“Kidnapped” 1886, Russian translation 1901), “The Black Arrow” (“The Black Arrow "1888, Russian translation 1889), "The Master of Ballantrae" (The Master of Ballantrae 1889, Russian translation 1890), "Catriona" ("Catriona" 1893, Russian translation 1901), "Saint-Yves" ( St. Ives, completed after Stevenson's death by A. Quiller Kutch 1897, Russian translation 1898). All these novels are distinguished by a combination of exciting adventurous plots, deep insight into history and subtle psychological study of characters. Stevenson's last novel, Weir of Hermiston (1896), which promised to be his masterpiece, remained unfinished.
Together with his stepson Lloyd Osborne, Stevenson wrote modern-life novels The Wrong Box (1889, Russian translation 2004), The Wrecker 1892, Russian translation 1896, this novel especially appreciated H. Borges), "Ebb" ("The Ebb-Tide" 1894).
Stevenson is the author of several collections of short stories: "New Arabian Nights" ("New Arabian Nights" 1882, Russian translation 1901, here the popular image of Florizel, Prince of Bohemia is introduced), "Once More New Arabian Nights" ("More New Arabian Nights" , in collaboration with F. Stevenson, the writer's wife, 1885), "The Merry Men and other Tales" ("The Merry Men, and other Tales", 1887), "Evening conversations on the island" ("Island Night's Entertainments" 1893, Russian . per. 1901).
Along with Treasure Island, Stevenson's best-known psychological story is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886, Russian translation, 1888).
Stevenson also acted as a poet (collections "Children's Flower Garden of Poems" 1885, "Ballads" 1890, in Russia the ballad "Heather Honey" translated by S. Marshak is very popular), essayist and publicist.
Stevenson's works were translated into Russian by K. Balmont, V. Bryusov, I. Kashkin, K. Chukovsky.
World-famous writer, classicist and poet of a wide scale, author of "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." This person is among the top thirty authors whose works are often translated in many countries. And this is Robert Louis Stevenson.
Biography of the writer
The future poet was born in the city of Edinburgh in 1850, on November 13th. His parents were people of aristocratic blood - Margaret Isabella Balfour and Thomas Stevenson. Robert was an only child. The entire Stevenson generation worked for a long time in the field of engineering, designing and inspecting lighthouses.
Almost all of his childhood, Robert Stevenson spent next to his grandfather a clergyman. The boy was very sickly, like his mother, he constantly caught a cold. Due to recurring illnesses, he rarely appeared at school, learned to read too late, but the passion for writing appeared in early childhood. He often composed unusual stories that his mother and nannies listened to. In addition, the boy demanded to take notes on everything that he tells. At first, the writing of the son was also to the liking of the father, because he himself was once fond of literature.
In 1867, after graduating from school, Robert entered the University of Edinburgh at the Faculty of Engineering. But the young man was not attracted to technical sciences, he was drawn to communication. During the holidays, Robert Stevenson watched the lighthouses, which his father insisted on. The guy quickly realized that he would not go into the family business.
Writer's path
Active writing Stevenson began in the 70s. First, his stories and stories hit the pages of London print media. The father of the young talent insisted on mastering the technical sciences, but the guy traveled more and more and collected interesting stories around the world. In 1878, the public was able to get acquainted with Robert's first author's diary, in which he described the details of his canoe trip through France and Belgium.
In 1883, Robert Stevenson became a very promising writer. "Treasure Island" is a novel written by him in the same year. Robert moved to Dorset from his native Scotland, where he created two more of his great creations. In 1888, the novel "Black Arrow" was written. In the winter of this year, the Stevenson couple went on vacation to the south of France with their children.
Two years later, Robert managed to build a house on the island of Upolu, which is located in Samoa. In the new place, the writer managed to create three novels, which also gained popularity. The author's only unfinished work was Wear Hermiston, begun in 1894.
In the winter of 1894, Robert Stevenson felt unwell. December 3, the famous writer died suddenly due to a brain hemorrhage. He was buried on Mount Vaea. A large number of people who loved and respected the writer's work were present at the funeral. Stevenson's burial site offers a beautiful view of the ocean.
100 years after the death of the world-famous poet, one of the Scottish banks issued a banknote worth 1 pound, which was signed by Stevenson, his portrait and a quill pen.
Robert Stevenson is considered a legend of classical literature, his manuscripts were sold during the First World War. Now these letters are considered lost.
(1850-1894) English writer, critic and essayist
The biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, a man of courageous character and dramatic fate, excited the imagination of his contemporaries along with his works. His name and life are covered with legends. Immediately after the death of the writer, his lengthy biographies, articles and essays were published with sensational conjectures about various episodes of Stevenson's life.
Modern literary criticism sees in him the founder, theoretician and leading figure of English romanticism of the last quarter of the 19th century, called neo-romanticism.
To the bourgeois world of the pursuit of wealth, the world of self-interest and falsehood, the writer contrasted the exoticism of adventure and the romance of high impulses for goodness and justice.
Having lived only 44 years, Robert Lewis Stevenson left readers more than 30 volumes of works of various genres and topics.
He realized his writing vocation very early, already in his childhood. In his pocket he always had two books sticking out: he read one, and in the other he kept notes of the exact words, details that struck him in the lines of poetry. It was a school of excellence. He wrote a lot, imitating famous writers, "monkey", as he himself said. This developed a literary taste, a sense of harmony and professional technique.
Robert Stephenson was born in the political and cultural center of Scotland - the city of Edinburgh, like Walter Scott. His grandfather was a prominent civil engineer who built bridges, lighthouses and breakwaters. The painting by the famous English artist John Turner depicts the Devil's Fist lighthouse he built on Bell Rock in eastern Scotland. For glorious buildings, grandfather was awarded a coat of arms. His sons continued the work of their father. The grandson valued the pedigree of his family, but he himself chose a different path.
Mother belonged to the glorious old family of Balfour, was the daughter of a priest. Robert, the only child in the family, suffered from a bronchial disease from childhood, which often chained him to the bed and plunged him into a painful state.
For some time, Robert Stevenson studied at the University of Edinburgh, agreeing with his father's wish to continue the family engineering tradition, and even received a silver medal for a competitive essay on fire for lighthouses, then he decisively changed his profession as an engineer to a lawyer and received the title of a lawyer, but his soul was already living at full power dream of literature. The first experience of the novice writer was a thin little book, written by a 16-year-old boy and published at the expense of his father, about a peasant uprising in Scotland in 1666.
In 1876, together with a friend, Robert went on a kayak trip along the rivers and canals of Belgium and France to Paris. The young man knew the French language and literature very well. On his return to Edinburgh, he published Inland Travel (1876), travel essays whose style would be taken up by Jerome. K. Jerome in the book "Three Men in a Boat", where a critical look at the existing world of things is cleverly woven into the outline of travel notes.
In a number of articles, Robert Stevenson reflects on the tasks of art and gives the main role not to the realistic reproduction of life, but to the realm of the imagination. Let the writer be carried away by a story that the reader will never experience in real life. To a certain extent, this came from Stevenson's rejection of mercantile reality. He tried to develop in people the best feelings - impatience, daring, determination, nobility.
He has long been occupied with the personality of the most talented French poet Francois Villon - a knight of honor, a vagabond, a drunkard and a thief, in whom good and evil are mixed. In 1877, the story "Francois Villon's Overnight Stay" appeared in print, in which, against the backdrop of winter Paris in 1456, the tragic fate of an unusually talented poet is depicted - Stevenson's first work of art.
Under the title "New Thousand and One Nights" (1882), the writer creates a witty parody of craft adventure literature. The new "Tales of Scheherazade" consisted of two books - "The Suicide Club" and "Diamond of the Rajah". In the second book, in a fantastic story about a priceless diamond, the possession of which turns a rude colonial soldier Thomas Vandeleur into a famous socialite, a profitable groom, Robert Stevenson subtly portrayed how the true values are replaced by false ones under the influence of the magical evil power contained in the coveted stone. The tales contained wise allusions to the serious problems of English society.
In 1878, accompanied by a donkey, dragging luggage without any pleasure, Robert Louis Stevenson went to the historical places of the French Protestant guerrilla war for their independence and convictions. He told about this in "Journey with a donkey in the Cevennes" (1879).
In Studies on People and Books, he paints portraits. Readers appreciated the skill of the young author's elegant style and the talent of a storyteller about extraordinary adventures. An unexpected trip to New York, prompted by a letter from a woman he dearly loved, nearly cost Stevenson his life. He crossed the ocean and rode from San Francisco to Monterey on horseback. On the way, he fell ill, a local hunter found him lying unconscious under a tree. On the verge of life and death, Robert Stevenson will be in America more than once. He married Fanny, who finally got a divorce from her dissolute husband, returned to his homeland and published the book "House on the Dunes" - the best work of the early period of creativity. In an entertaining plot, Stevenson revealed a meaningful theme: using the example of very bright and strong characters of two heroes - Frank Kessilis and Northmore - he showed the failure of the individualism and egoism of the traditional romantic hero.
Robert Stevenson's desire to create a novel came true quite by accident. While drawing something, his stepson Lloyd asked him to write something interesting. Fascinated, Stevenson sketched out the contours of an imaginary island, resembling a "raised fat dragon." The result was a map of the fictional "Treasure Island". This map gave rise to the plot.
"The ship's cook" - that was the name of the novel at first. Its chapters were read in the family circle, some of the suggestions of the listeners were included in the text. The work came out with a dedication to the boy - Lloyd Osborne. The public met the novel enthusiastically, magazine critics - in different ways, from condescending approval to high praise. The plot is based on the search for countless treasures hidden by the famous pirate Captain Flint. Residents of a provincial town: the boy Jim, his father, a tavern keeper and regulars of the tavern - find themselves in the face of mysterious events, get involved in a risky adventure and become the heroes of tempting and dangerous adventures. The boy finds himself in extremely dangerous situations, looks into the eyes of death, acts decisively and independently; his courage, enthusiastic devotion to the dream, moral purity set the tone for the entire book. Jim and his friends are faced with marauding pirates, bandits and villains, not noble corsairs. And in this world of evil, his hero discovers true spiritual treasures.
Robert Stevenson loved Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe", saw its virtues not so much in the chain of events as in the "charm of circumstances". And he built his novel not so much on the effect of a purely external action, but on the psychological authenticity and persuasiveness of living pictures. Stevenson's skill in painting such a convex picture is so convincing that we constantly feel our involvement in what is happening.
The traditional adventurous plot - pirates, treasures, sea adventures, a lost island - turned out to be completely non-traditional thanks to the sharpness and openness of the look of the character-narrator Jim Hawkins. The characters are portrayed clearly and convincingly.
The author's special luck is the image of John Silver. Arguing with the traditional notion of the victory of good and the viciousness of evil, Stevenson draws an attractive image of the lonely ship's cook Silver - insidious, vicious, cruel, but smart, energetic and dexterous.
The vitality of evil and the insidious attraction of vice had both interested and excited Robert Stevenson before. In 1885, he read Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment in French translation and was shocked by the power of imagination, the mystical duality of good and evil in human nature.
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), the doctor, by means of a drug he invented, separates the dark forces of his soul, and his double appears in the world - the ugly dwarf Mr. Hyde, who commits one crime after another and at the same time does not feel pangs of conscience, no doubts - only a feeling of anger and fear.
The science fiction and detective techniques developed by Robert Stevenson in this story were adopted by HG Wells in The Invisible Man.
The theme of the struggle between Scotland and England for independence and even more distant pages of history - the enmity of the Scarlet and White Roses - appeared on the pages of the novels Kidnapped, Catriona and Black Arrow.
In Kidnapped and Catriona, Stevenson tells the story of a young Scot, David Balfour, whose inheritance was appropriated by his uncle. The meeting with violence and deceit does not give rise to despair in the young hero, but to youthful determination and courage. After many adventures, David finds his happiness with Catriona.
In 1888, it was time for Robert Lewis Stevenson to travel on the ocean. He visited several archipelagos of the Pacific Ocean in two years. These were the places where the famous Cook traveled and died, where there were also Russians who circumnavigated the world, where Herman Melville, the famous writer, wandered, where Jack London later sailed on the Snark, where was the "island of Robinson Crusoe." Feeling refreshed, Stevenson completed one of his finest works, The Owner of Ballantra (1889), a tragedy novel as defined by the author himself. The writer explored the causes of the tragedy of two rival brothers, who embodied directly opposite principles in their characters: strength, diabolical luck and depravity of one and decency, honesty, but lifelessness, amorphousness of the other. The action takes place in Scotland of the 18th century, in places familiar to the author.
Hoping to improve his health, Robert Stevenson settles on the island of Upolu (Samoa) and goes on his third voyage to the ocean. He works hard and creates, shaking with a cough and wallowing in fatigue, “The Shipwrecked” (1892), “David Balfour”, “Catrion” (1893), in which he contrasted egoism and cruelty with spiritual nobility and moral purity. In all these works, his homeland, Scotland, is relentlessly present. The writer continues to work on the novels "Saint-Ives" and "Wear Hermiston".
In the collection "Evening Conversations on the Island", he reflected the exotic impressions of a trip to the islands, where he met with the Samoans and read to them his story "The Satanic Bottle". They called him Tusitala, that is, the Storyteller, and they believed that he possessed a magical vessel, which was kept in his safe. The Samoans cherished the memory of the writer also because Robert Louis Stevenson spoke out in defense of the local population from the outrages of the colonialists and for several years published his articles in The Times in defense of peace and justice. He visits the camp of lepers and makes public the hypocrisy of the ministers of the church.
The fate and history of Scotland rings like a bell in the writer's heart. He highly appreciated the role of the people's historical memory in building the future. In his mind, the idea arose of “a real historical novel, covering the entire era and the people, our people ...” The title was determined - “Tramp”, but the right hand was taken away, bleeding from the throat became more frequent. And then there was a brain hemorrhage.
The body of Robert Stevenson, covered with the English national flag, was solemnly buried on Mount Weah. Here, to the grave of his beloved writer, in 1908 Jack London sailed on the Snark yacht. He went through storms, standing at the helm himself and proud of his victory over the elements. With difficulty, together with his wife Charmian, he made his way through a thick thicket to the top of the mountain. Charmian wondered how Stevenson's coffin could have been brought to such a height, and Jack told her that, in fulfilling the last will of an adored man who wished to be buried on this peak, several hundred islanders worked all night, cutting a path through the thickets. And in the morning the leaders of the tribes on their shoulders solemnly, accompanied by thousands of admirers of the writer, brought him here.
