“I … have fallen head over heels into a new tale: ‘The Master of Ballantrae.’ No thought have I now apart from it.” — Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, Christmas Eve, 1887, Saranac Lake Dec. 24, 1887, was a Saturday, a day of the week which until recently, had been just ...

Walter Simpson, Bart to his friends, had memories with Robert Louis Stevenson going back to childhood when they were neighbors and could be seen playing together in Queen Street Gardens in the newer and nicer part of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bart’s father, Sir James Simpson, had earned his ...

The timing of the death of Thomas Stevenson would have everything to do with the fate of his only child, Robert Louis Stevenson, whom he did not even recognize when the latter showed up next to his death bed at the family residence on Heriot Row in Edinburgh, Scotland. On May 8, 1887, ...

When Robert Louis Stevenson came to Saranac Lake on Oct. 3, 1887, he and his family and friends had presumed for some time that Louis had tuberculosis as the explanation of his chronically weak lungs. Since tuberculosis, or TB, was the health scourge of their times, it would be a natural ...

When Robert Louis Stevenson sailed out of San Francisco, California, in June of 1888, to explore the South Seas, he had an itinerary of sorts, always subject to change, either by whim or necessity. In Oceania, at that time, RLS would learn that an itinerary was a pipe dream where all plans ...

“In some ways I am sorry that he (Robert Louis Stevenson) went to the South Seas ... His uncle, Dr. George Balfour, came to me soon after he had gone to the South Seas. He said ‘I misdoubt Louis’ going to the South Seas. It will undoubtedly do him good at first in that mild climate, but ...