Literary Birthday – 13 November – Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850 and died on 3 December 1894.
Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes
- Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
- Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.
- The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
- The cruellest lies are often told in silence.
- All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
- It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathise; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
- I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
- To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
- Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
'The Skye Boat Song' from 'Outlander' was adapted from Stevenson's 1892 poem, 'Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone' Sing me a song of a lad that is gone Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye Mull was astem, Rum on the port, Eigg on the starboard bow: Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now? Sing me a song of the lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone, Give me the eyes, give me the soul, Give me the lad that's gone. Sing me a song of the lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Billow and breeze, islands and seas, Mountains of rain and sun, All that was good, all that was fair All that was me is gone.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. He became one of the most popular writers of his time, best known for adventure novels such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and the Gothic classic The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson was known for his vivid storytelling, memorable characters, and fast-moving plots. His adventure stories often contained deeper moral questions and explored the darker sides of human nature. He reportedly wrote the first draft of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in just three days, but destroyed it after his wife criticised the manuscript. He then rewrote the novel in about six weeks. In December 1889, Stevenson and his extended family arrived in Apia, Samoa. He and his wife decided to settle there, and he spent his final years on the island of Upolu, where he died in 1894. Although his critical reputation changed over the years, Stevenson’s books remain widely read and admired. In 2018, he was ranked as the 26th-most-translated author in the world, just behind Charles Dickens. The Writers’ Museum near Edinburgh’s Royal Mile also has a room dedicated to Stevenson, displaying personal items from his childhood and adult life.
Source for Image: Henry Walter Barnett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Louis_Stevenson_by_Henry_Walter_Barnett_bw.jpg
by Amanda Patterson
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