Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The boy was
often ill and during the cold winters stayed in the house. He had no brothers or
sisters. Books were his only friends. Robert read very much. He thought about
other countries and drew maps of different places which he wanted to see. The
boy wrote stories of adventures on the sea and told those stories to his
parents.
In summer when Robert was not ill, he travelled
with his father over Scotland. He saw storms on the sea and described those
storms in his stories. At school he began to write stories and poems and wanted
to be a writer, but his father was an engineer and wanted his son to be an
engineer too. He said that writing poems and stories was only a hobby, not a
profession.
Stevenson went to the Edinburgh university for some time, then he
travelled in different countries and wrote many stories. In 1883 Stevenson
published his book “Treasure Island”. Readers liked the book very much. In 1886
Stevenson published his book “Kidnapped”. Then other books of adventures came
out. People in many countries read and still read Stevenson’s stories. The hobby
of a small boy was now his profession. But the writer was very ill and he died
in 1894.