The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

This book explores the life and adventures of the famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, focusing on his childhood, family heritage, and the early influences that shaped his literary career. It highlights Stevenson's adventurous spirit, creativity, and the profound impact of his upbringing on his writing. The opening of the book sets the stage by discussing the legacy of Stevenson's grandfather, Robert Stevenson, a prominent lighthouse builder, showcasing the adventurous and industrious spirit that would later inspire the author. It intertwines the family's engineering background with young Robert's early experiences, illustrating how these elements contributed to his imaginative nature despite his frail health. The narrative captures the essence of Stevenson's childhood, filled with tales of exploration and adventure, laying a firm foundation for the fascinating life of one of literature's most cherished figures.The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising off the coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank the warning bell on one of the great rocks, to plague the good Abbot of Arbroath who had put it there. The following year the Rover returned and perished himself on the same rock. In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis Stevenson, we find proud record of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, having built Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot years afterward. No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather. When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger, and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast "was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old, an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote: Stevenson, "Family of Engineers."]