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Edinburgh Town Guide, Robert Louis Stevenson, 7K

The author and poet Robert Louis Stevenson is one of Edinburgh's most famous sons.

Edinburgh Town Guide, Stevenson, 1K Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the son of a wealthy engineering family. He studied engineering and law at Edinburgh University and when he graduated began a career as an advocate.

However he was much more interested in writing and soon began publishing his novels and poetry.

His most famous works include Treasure Island, Kidnapped and of course The Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which is believed to have been based on the famous Edinburgh character Deacon Brodie.

In the 1880s Stevenson became ill with tuberculosis and, as the Scottish weather was so unsuitable for his condition, moved to Samoa where he died in 1894 and where he is buried.

In his lifetime Stevenson requested that no memorial be erected in his memory and so Edinburgh doesn't have a monument to him. However in Princes Street Gardens there is a flagstone with the initials RLS that remembers one of Edinburgh's most popular writers.

The Writer's Museum in Lady Stair's House on the Lawnmarket stretch of the Royal Mile tells the story of Stevenson's life and works, along with those of other great Edinburgh writers Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.





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