Inside The Mind Of Robert Louis Stevenson

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Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on November 13,1850 to Thomas and Mary Isabella Balfour Stevenson. Stevenson spent most of his short life sickly and even as a child he has to be tended to by a nurse. He grew up in a very religious middle class family who taught him the history of the Presbyterian Scottish movement and how its related to their belief system. As he grew up his ideals changed and when entered college at Edinburgh University, his natural talents for writing flourished. His father pushed in to join the family career to be an engineer which he declined to do because he truly wanted to be a writer. His father naturally disapproved and pushed him to pursue a degree in law. In 1875, Stevenson attained a degree in law which he barely used.

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After he graduated, he went from country to country writing essays about the essential goodness and humor of mankind. During one of these writing exploitations in France, he met  Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne who was a married american who was ten years older than he was. The beginning of the relationship was a very estranged one, she sent him a wire letting him know she had reconnected with her husband again back in their homestead in California. The distraught Stevenson who was sick and broke, spent the last of his savings and sailed to New York and then another arduous overland train trip from there to California in pursuit of Osbourne where he fell gravely ill. His parents got news of his condition and sent him money to save him from poverty. Stevenson was nursed back to moderate health and in 1879, he moved to San Francisco from Monterrey. A short while later, Fanny Osbourne received a divorce from her husband and quickly her and Stevenson were married in May of 1880.

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During the early hours off an afternoon, Mrs. Stevenson (Fanny) described hearing her husband scream loudly, she rushed and awakened him and he responded very angrily, "Why did you wake me, I was dreaming a fine bogey tale. It was made know that this particular dream was Jekyll's first transformation into Hyde. A lot of the story actually came from dreams Stevenson had and he rewrote them to fit the plot of the story. Stevenson spoke of dreaming of being a doctor falling asleep and waking as another and doing very mischievous activities during the night. Since he laid sick the majority of the time this book was reading he had many dreams that developed into more of the storyline of the book he was writing. In 1886, he published The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It would be notably one of his greatest accomplishments of his life. On a cold December day in 1894, Stevenson passed away due to a cerebral hemorrhage and complications of tuberculosis.

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Works Cited

"Robert Louis Stevenson Biography." UNet Users' Home Pages. Web. 08 May 2011.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Robert Louis Stevenson Biography - CliffsNotes." Get Homework Help with CliffsNotes Study Guides - CliffsNotes. Web. 08 May 2011.