The Raven Post

Biography

Robert Louis Stevenson was born November 13, 1850, and died December 3, 1894. He was a Scottish poet and author and is now best known his novels Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, among others.

Throughout Stevenson’s life—and his youth, in particular—he struggled with poor health and bronchial illnesses. These worsened when his family moved to a drafty, cold house in Edinburgh, and even in his adult years, his poor health left him notably frail. He was largely educated through private tutoring, as he was frequently too ill to attend school, and he wrote many stories throughout his childhood. His father funded the printing of his first published work, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666, when the young writer was just sixteen years old. Stevenson attended the University of Edinburgh in order to study engineering—and ostensibly enter his family’s lighthouse-design business—but after finding no interest in the topic, he instead chose to pursue a career in literature. Even so, he did qualify for the Scottish bar in 1875 at his father’s behest.

Stevenson acquainted himself with many of London’s literary figures while visiting a cousin in England. The Cornhill Magazine editor Leslie Steven took a particular interest in the young man and introduced him to poet William Ernest Henley, whom many believe to have later inspired the character of Long John Silver from Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Stevenson eventually became a prolific travel writer, and his first travel book, An Inland Voyage, was published in 1878. The year prior, he published his first short story, “A Lodging for the Night,” and his first novel—and perhaps his most enduring work—the aforementioned Treasure Island, was published several years later in 1883.

In 1894, after publishing numerous travel accounts, novels, and short stories, Stevenson died as the result of a stroke at the age of forty-four.

Much of Stevenson’s work is preoccupied with either recounting or creating tales of travel and adventure, but several of his lesser-known short stories contain slightly more fantastical elements. Below is a collection of some of these tales. Read at your own discretion—and please, enjoy.

Short Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

Thrawn Janet (1881)
The Waif Woman (1914)
The Bottle Imp (1891)
The Merry Men (1882)
The Body Snatcher (1884)
Olalla (1885)