Значение слова STEVENSON в Литературной энциклопедии

STEVENSON

ROBERT LOUIS (1850-1894).-Novelist and essayist, was _b._ at Edin., the _s._ of Thomas S., a distinguished civil engineer. His health was extremely delicate. He was destined for the engineering profession, in which his family had for two generations been eminent, but having neither inclination nor physical strength for it, he in 1871 exchanged it for law, and was called to the Bar in 1875, but never practised. From childhood his interests had been literary, and in 1871 he began to contribute to the _Edinburgh University Magazine_ and the _Portfolio_. A tour in a canoe in 1876 led to the publication in 1878 of his first book, _An Inland Voyage_. In the same year, _The New Arabian Nights_, afterwards separately _pub._ appeared in magazines, and in 1879 he brought out _Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes_. In that year he went to California and _m._ Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe in 1880 he entered upon a period of productiveness which, in view of his wretched health, was, both as regards quantity and worth, highly remarkable. The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edin., and by the publication of _Virginibus Puerisque_. Other works followed in rapid succession. _Treasure Island_ (1882), _Prince Otto_ and _The Child's Garden of Verse_ (1885), _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Kidnapped_ (1886), _Underwoods_ (poetry), _Memories and Portraits_ (essays), and _The Merry Men_, a collection of short stories (1887), and in 1888 _The Black Arrow_. In 1887 he went to America, and in the following year visited the South Sea Islands where, in Samoa, he settled in 1890, and where he _d._ and is buried. In 1889 _The Master of Ballantrae_ appeared, in 1892 _Across the Plains_ and _The Wrecker_, in 1893 _Island Nights Entertainments_ and _Catriona_, and in 1894 _The Ebb Tide_ in collaboration with his step-son, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne. By this time his health was completely broken, but to the last he continued the struggle, and left the fragments _St. Ives_ and _Weir of Hermiston_, the latter containing some of his best work. They were _pub._ in 1897. Though the originality and power of S.'s writings was recognised from the first by a select few, it was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide may be said to have turned with the publication of _Treasure Island_ in 1882, which at once gave him an assured place among the foremost imaginative writers of the day. His greatest power is, however, shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th century, such as _Kidnapped_, _Catriona_, and _Weir of Hermiston_, and in those, _e.g._, _The Child's Garden of Verse_, which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology of child-life; _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ is a marvellously powerful and subtle psychological story, and some of his short tales also are masterpieces. Of these _Thrawn Janet_ and _Will of the Mill_ may be mentioned as examples in widely different kinds. His excursions into the drama in collaboration with W.E. Henley-_Deacon Brodie_, _Macaire_, _Admiral Guinea_, _Beau Austin_,-added nothing to his reputation. His style is singularly fascinating, graceful, various, subtle, and with a charm all its own. _Works_, Edinburgh ed. (28 vols., 1894-98). _Life_ by Grahame Balfour (1901), _Letters_, S. Colvin (1899).

Литературная энциклопедия. 2012