Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, into a family of lighthouse engineers. Despite making an attempt at studying engineering, and then studying and qualifying as a lawyer, by the time he was in his early twenties it was apparent to Stevenson, and eventually to his parents, that his calling was to be a writer. The ill-health that had dogged him from his earliest childhood had provided him with the space and time in which his imagination could flourish.

Although his travels in search of a climate conducive to better health kept him away from Scotland, much of the fiction he was developing in the 1880s reflected his deep interest in his native land.  While most famous for his novels, Stevenson was also a poet, best known for A Child’s Garden of Verses.  He also wrote much lyric poetry, and a range of lively verse in Scots. It was in his poetry that Stevenson most effectively expressed the pain of his separation from Scotland.

Find out more about Robert Louis Stevenson through the Scottish Poetry Library’s Poets A-Z.