Known for his adventure stories and as one of the fathers of classic horror, Robert Louis Stevenson was a late-Victorian author and one of the most well-known writers of popular fiction of his time. Born in 1850 in Edinburgh to a lighthouse engineer and the daughter of a member of the local gentry, Stevenson had a spotty education due to poor health. He was a late reader but an avid storyteller from an early age and took to writing young. Despite wanting his son to join the family business, Stevenson’s father supported the budding author’s work by funding the publication of his writing at the age of 16.

Stevenson’s studies at university further cemented the young writer’s resolve to pursue a career in the arts. On holidays, his father took him throughout Scotland to inspect lighthouses. These trips inspired a love of travel, and travel became an early theme in his work. The health issues that plagued Stevenson as a child followed him throughout his life, leading to many long periods where he would be bedridden. Throughout his twenties, he traveled to France and across Europe for his health. He published his first travel book, An Inland Voyage, in 1878. Much of his early career was dedicated to travel writing covering journeys throughout Europe and to the United States.