Sept. 9, 1888: “This is real pleasure—sailing, and the ocean has been truly Pacific. We sit all day on the top of the deckhouse, sheltered from the sun by the sails, reading, writing, working and talking. We have had splendid sunsets, too, almost as decidedly purple and gold as those we see ...

Spring was just beginning to do its thing on April 16, 1888, the day Robert Louis Stevenson and his mother along with the maid, Valentine, left town to get out of town. Mother is Mrs. Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, called “Maggie” since childhood. She didn’t know it yet, but she ...

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a book of which the oft-repeated statement is literally true, that its perusal is an unbroken spell.” — Newspaper review, 1887 Robert Louis Stevenson was already a household name before he rocked his contemporaries of the Victorian Age ...

“I must give you some account of how we pass our days here. My stove is lit about 6:30 in the morning, and warms the room very quickly, so that I can soon sit up to read or write. Louis and Lloyd breakfast early and work until lunch-time; when Lou writes in the sitting room, I keep up the ...

“To be interviewed from morning to night as the mother of Robert Louis Stevenson is no joke, I assure you, however great an honor it may be.” — Mrs. Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, better known as “Maggie,” September 1887. The Balfours of Pilrig are a family of “good ...

From the Saranac Lake News, Feb. 8, 1917: “Mr. Osbourne also spoke of the wood blocks which were carved by R.L.S. and are now, through his stepson’s gifts, on exhibition at the Stevenson Memorial. He told how they were made at Davos, Switzerland, when Mr. Stevenson was ill and exercised his ...