Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), novelist, travel writer and poet, was born in Edinburgh on November 13th 1850 as Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. His father, Thomas Stevenson, and his grandfather, Robert Stevenson were both lighthouse engineers. His best known works are Treasure Island (1883) and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). His best known poem is the epitaph he wrote for himself, Requiem:

UNDER the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie:

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you 'grave for me:

Here he lies where he long'd to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.