Robert Louis Stevenson
Author biography. Trumpet Publishing House Authors Directory.
Who he was
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on November 13, 1850, and died in Samoa on December 3, 1894, aged forty-four. He came from a family of lighthouse engineers and was expected to join the firm. He studied law instead, qualified, and never practiced.
His health was poor for most of his life and it governed where he could live. He traveled constantly in search of a climate that would not kill him, through France, America, Switzerland and the South Pacific, and he died in Samoa, where he had settled and where he is buried.
Why he wrote it
Treasure Island began with a map. On a wet holiday in Scotland in 1881 he drew an island to amuse his twelve-year-old stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, and then wrote the story to go with the map.
It was serialized first in a boys' paper, under a pen name, and published as a book in 1883. He wrote it to entertain one specific child, which is why it has no moralizing in it anywhere and why it still moves at the speed it does.
The books we publish, and why
We publish Treasure Island in hardcover and in a Junior Classics edition for younger readers.
The reason is Long John Silver. He is the best villain ever handed to a child, and he is not a simple one. He is charming, capable, genuinely good company, and he will kill without hesitation when it serves him. A boy has to work out, in real time and on incomplete evidence, whether a likeable man can be trusted. Almost nothing else a child reads teaches that.
The benefit is judgment under uncertainty. Jim Hawkins is given no adult he can fully rely on and has to decide for himself. Fathers tend to read it twice.
How to read it with a child
Read aloud from about seven, independently from about nine. The Junior Classics edition brings the lower end down for a child who is not yet ready for the full text.
The first four chapters at the Admiral Benbow are the slowest and the best read aloud. Once the voyage starts the book carries itself. If a child stalls, it is almost always in the early inn chapters, so push through those with them rather than letting it be abandoned.
Sea vocabulary will not be understood and does not need to be. Do not stop to explain a bowsprit. The question afterwards is the useful one: at what exact point did Jim stop trusting Silver, and what had Silver actually done. Children argue about this, which is the sign of a good book.
Pair it with
- The Junior Genius Method, our approach of Read, Notice, Write, Recite, Remember, Question, Apply. Treasure Island suits the Notice stage especially, because Silver gives himself away in small moments long before the plot catches up.
- Howard Pyle, The Story of King Arthur, for a child who wants adventure with a code attached rather than adventure with a pirate in it.
- Machiavelli, The Prince, for the parent. Silver is a working illustration of nearly everything in it.
His principal works
- An Inland Voyage, 1878, and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, 1879. Travel writing.
- Treasure Island, serialized 1881 to 1882, published as a book 1883.
- A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885. Poems.
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886.
- Kidnapped, 1886, and its sequel Catriona, 1893.
- The Black Arrow, 1888.
- The Master of Ballantrae, 1889.
- Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893. Pacific stories.
- Weir of Hermiston, 1896. Unfinished at his death and considered by many his best writing.
General reference on Robert Louis Stevenson. External links open outside Trumpet Publishing House.
Our editions
This collection grows as further editions and formats are added, so it is worth returning to.
All Trumpet editions by Robert Louis Stevenson