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Robert Louis Stevenson |
Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer who rejected Christianity and convention as a young man, only to embrace it later as a Tory and supporter of the empire. He traveled the world, producing the books that would make him famous, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and A Child’s Garden of Verses. But he was plagued with poor health throughout his life and fought depression in his last years, telling friends that he hoped his illnesses would kill him. “Requiem” is the verse on his gravestone in Samoa, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of forty-four.
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |