BIOGRAPHY
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850. His father Thomas belonged to a family of engineers who had built many of the deep-sea lighthouses around the rocky coast of Scotland. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour, came from a family of lawyers and church ministers. In 1857 the family moved to 17 Heriot Row, a solid respectable house in Edinburgh’s New Town.

At the age of seventeen he enrolled at Edinburgh University to study engineering, with the aim - his father hoped - of following him in the family firm. However, he abandoned this course of studies and made the compromise of studying law. He 'passed advocate' in 1875 but did not practice since by now he knew he wanted to be a writer. In the university’s summer vacations he went to France to be in the company of other young artists, both writers and painters. His first published work was an essay called ‘Roads’, and his first published volumes were works of travel writing.
 He died in December 1894 and even shaped the manner of his burial: as he had wished, he was buried at the top of Mount Vaea above his home on Samoa. Appropriately it was his own short poem, ‘Requiem’ (from an 1887 collection), that was written on his tomb: ‘Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie...’

BIOGRAPHY: His first published volume, An Inland Voyage (1878), is an account of the journey he made by canoe from Antwerp to northern France, in which prominence is given to the author and his thoughts. A companion work, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), gives us more of his thoughts on life and human society and continues in consolidating the image of the debonair narrator that we also find in his essays and letters (which can be classed among his best works).

Short stories: Stevenson’s first published fictional narrative was ‘A Lodging for the Night’ (1877), a short story originally published in a magazine, like other early narrative works, such as ‘The Sire De Malétroit’s Door’ (1877), ‘Providence and the Guitar’ (1878), and ‘The Pavilion on the Links’ (1880, considered by Conan Doyle in 1890 as ‘the high-water mark of [Stevenson’s] genius’ and ‘the first short story in the world’, qu. Menikoff 1990: 342). These four tales were collected in a volume entitled New Arabian Nights in 1882, preceded by the seven linked stories originally called ‘Latter-Day Arabian Nights’ when published in a magazine in 1878. This collection is seen as the starting point for the history of the English short story by Barry Menikoff (1987: 126). The Arabian stories were described by critics of the time as ‘fantastic stories of adventure’, ‘grotesque romances’ ‘in which the analytic mind loses itself’ (Maixner 1981: 117, 120), and are seen by Chesterton (1927: 169) as ‘unequalled’ and ‘the most unique of his works’. They have an affinity with the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in their setting in the labyrinthine modern city, and the subject matter of crimes and guilty secrets involving respectable members of society. Stevenson continued to write short stories all his life, and notable titles include: ‘Thrawn Janet’ (1881), ‘The Merry Men’ (1882), ‘The Treasure of Franchard’ (1883), ‘Markheim’ (1885), which, being a narrative of the Double, has certain affinities with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ‘Olalla’ (1885), which like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde originated in a dream and which also deals with the possibility of degeneration. The above short narratives were all collected in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables in 1887.

‘Olalla’ was written in the period of just over two years (1885-7) when Stevenson and Fanny were living in Bournmouth. Despite problems of health and finances, this was a period of meetings with Henry James, W.E. Henley and other literary figures, and when he wrote the long short-story (published as a single volume), his ‘breakthrough book’, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).

Another collection Island Nights’ Entertainments, tales with a South Sea setting, was published in 1893, including ‘The Bottle Imp’ (1891), ‘The Beach of Falesà’ (1892, a long short story of the same length as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), and ‘The Isle of Voices’ (1893).

TREASURE ISLAND AND ‘CHILDREN’S LITERATURE’: Another fortuitous turning-point in Stevenson’s life had occurred when on holiday in Scotland in the summer of 1881. The cold rainy weather forced the family to amuse themselves indoors, and one day Stevenson and his twelve-year-old stepson, Lloyd (Fanny’s son by her first marriage), drew, coloured and annotated the map of an imaginary ‘Treasure Island’. The map stimulated Stevenson’s imagination and, ‘On a chill September morning, by the cheek of a brisk fire’ he began to write a story based on it as an entertainment for the rest of the family. Treasure Island (published in book form in 1883) marks the beginning of his popularity and his career as a profitable writer, it was his first volume-length fictional narrative, and the first of his writings ‘for children’ (or rather, the first of writings manipulating the genres associated with children). Later works that fit into this category are A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), The Black Arrow (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and its continuation Catriona (1893). The four narrative works mentioned in this paragraph, though they all have youthful protagonists and were all first published in magazines for young people, are also clearly intended for adult readers. The last three, based on careful documentary research, are fictions exploring history and culture; and the last two are interesting studies of Scottish culture and could also be placed in the following section.

NOVELS AND ROMANCES: Prince Otto (1885), his second full-length narrative, is defined by Andrew Lang as ‘a philosophical-humouristical-psychological fantasy’ (qu. Maixner 1981: 181). The action is provocatively set in the imaginary state of Grünewald, an unusual choice for Stevenson, and it was to historical Scotland (which had already provided the setting for Kidnapped and Catriona) that he turned for his next full-length ‘adult’ story, The Master of Ballantrae (1889). This is a Doubles narrative in which the brothers James and Henry have similarities with Jekyll and Hyde, not only in their initials, but also because of the mixed personality of the ‘good’ character, the constant return of the persecuting Double, and the simultaneous death of the two antagonists. Both Calvino and Brecht consider it to be the best of his works, and it is highly praised by writers as diverse as Henry James, Walter Benjamin and André Gide. The novel that he was working on when he died, Weir of Hermiston (published incomplete and posthumously in 1896), is also set in Scotland in the not-too-distant past and has also been often praised and seen as Stevenson’s masterpiece. The centre of the story is the difficult relationship of an authoritarian father and a son who has to assert his own identity (a theme present in many of Stevenson’s works - and we may remember that Hyde is presented in some ways as Jekyll’s son - and clearly a way he used of exploring and coming to terms with his difficult relationship with his own father).
 

THE MAP OF THE TREASURE ISLAND
He was with Lloyd Osborne when he painted the map of an imaginary island.He added mountains, names and adventures and he considered the posibility of writing a story with the island as scenery.The first step was decide the name of John Silver, his friend.In that time the title of the novel was "the cooker of board". Lloyd read the first chapters and he animated Stevenson to continue.

THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE NOVEL
Its 1st publication was in "Young Folks Magazine" as a serie of chapters, in 1881.It was published as a book in 1883.It was his first economic success.

PERSONAL COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NOVEL
Treasure Island is the way of the knowledge of a young man. Is the story of a dream of freedom, of the scape to the sea and of the travel as destinity. This is the answer of one of the deepest questions: how can we live?
Stevenson establishes a personal relationship with the reader, and creates a sense of wonder through his brilliant style and his adoption and manipulation of a variety of genres. Writing when the period of the three-volume novel (dominant from about 1840 to 1880) was coming to an end, he seems to have written everything except a traditional Victorian novel.

LITERARY INFLUENCES
Despite of his importance, Charles Dickens was not a really strong influence of Robert Louis Stevenson. More than that, his biggest influence was Daniel Defoe´s "The adventures of Robinson Crusoe". This work inspired his adventure´s novels and his mystery novels were influenced by the work of the American Edgar Allan Poe.

INLUENCES TO OTHER ARTS
The work of Stevenson have influenced not only to Literature, but in some other arts such as films, comics, theatral plays, or musicals. It could be mentioned a lot of works based in Stevenson´s literature, around a hundred of versions about all his writings. Despite the extension of his literary work the clearest influent works of Robert Louis Stevenson were ´The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde´ and Treasure Island. An example of a comic based on his Treasure Island is the next:

SUMMARY
 Our narrator is Jim Hawkins, son of a guesthouse owner on the west coast of England sometime in the eighteenth century. To the inn come firstly an old buccaneer who has a map of Captain Flint’s treasure, and secondly a group of pirates under the command of ominous blind man Pew. Jim Hawkins, our hero, in an act of bravery and cunning gets hold of the map before this rabid mob gets it. He delivers the map to Squire Trelawney, and together they set off for Treasure Island in the Squire’s schooner. The rest of the crew, apart from Dr Livesey (a friend of the squire) are a company collected by Long John Silver. The latter and his men try to mutiny and get hold of the treasure themselves but Jim intervenes and through a series of enthralling adventures we find ourselves on Treasure Island with the marooned Ben Gunn and ever closer to the treasure itself.