About the author-Robert Louis Stevenson 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, in 1850. His father was an engineer, and in 1867 Robert went to Edinburgh University to study engineering himself. However, he soon found that engineering did not interest him. He trained to be a lawyer instead, but in the fact he had already decided to be a writer. He met his future wife, Fanny Osbourne, in France. She was American, ten years older than Stevenson, and a married woman with two children. The fell in love, and after Fanny's divorce, she and Robert Louis Stevenson were married in 1880, in San Francisco in the USA.

Stevenson liked to travel, although much of the time his health was poor. In 1888, he and Fanny went to live on the Pacific island of Samoa because the weather there was good for Stevenson's health. The islanders called him 'The Teller of Tales'. He died on Samoa in 1894.

Stevenson wrote travel, books short stories, essays, and novels. His exciting adventure stories, such as Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886), have been popular since they first appeared. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), another of his famous titles, became a popular play and has also been filmed many times. The kindly Dr.Jekyll and the evil Mr Hyde have been played by such famous actors as John Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Fredric March (who won an Oscar for it), Spencer Tracy, and Christopher Lee. The phrase 'Jekyll and Hyde', meaning someone with two very different sides to their personality, has become part of the English Language.