Scottish Author and Poet. He received world acclaim for his novels "Treasure Island" (1883), "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886), "Kidnapped" (1886), and his children's poem collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885). Born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson (he later changed the spelling of his middle name to Louis and dropped the 2nd middle name), he was the only child of a lighthouse engineer. He suffered from chronic illness as a child. In November 1867, he enrolled at Edinburgh University to study engineering, but soon realized that writing was his real passion. He sought any refuge that would give him relief from his chronic illness, including the French Rivera, America (mainly California), and finally the South Pacific. In France, he first met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an older woman with three children from a previous marriage. They married in May 1880 during his stay in California. While searching the South Pacific for the perfect climate, he stopped in Honolulu, Hawaii, which led to his famous visit to the leper colony at Molokai. A Belgian priest, Fr. Damien De Veuster, had organized the colony, built houses and a church, and acted as a nurse for those suffering from the disease. His ministry cost Fr. Damien his life. The priest contracted leprosy and died at the age of 49. After Fr. Damien's death, a Presbyterian missionary, Charles McEwan Hyde, who was stationed in Honolulu, wrote a letter to a friend in which he criticized Fr. Damien, suggesting that the priest caught the disease through carelessness, unhygienic practices, and sexual impropriety with his patients. The letter became public and was published in an Australian newspaper where it was read by Stevenson. In response, in 1890, Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, then living in Hawaii, wrote a passionate, 6,000-word open letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde defending Fr. Damien, entitled "Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde of Honolulu from Robert Louis Stevenson." In 1889, he finally found his paradise on the Island of Samoa, high on the slope of Mount Vaca where he constructed a large house and dubbed the estate "Vailima" (Five Rivers). While sitting on the veranda with his wife, he suffered from what was probably a brain hemorrhage. He died at the age of 44 and was interred at the summit of Mount Vaca. His other notable works include his novels "The Black Arrow: A Tale of Two Roses" (1888), "The Master of Ballantrae: A Writer's Tale" (1889), "The Wrong Box" (1889 - co-written with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne), "The Wrecker" (1892 - co-written with Lloyd Osbourne), "Catriona" (1893), and "The Ebb Tide" (1894 - co-written with Lloyd Osbourne). Many of his novels were later immortalized on the silver screen. A bronze cenotaph in his honor by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens resides in the Moray aisle of the Saint Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. The inscription on his tomb is his 1880 poem, "Requiem."