Robert Louis Stevenson

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VirginiaHuguenot

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Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author, was born on November 13, 1850 and died on December 3, 1894. He was influenced greatly by his Presbyterian heritage. He wrote adventure stories, horror and travel literature among other things including such famous titles as Kidnapped, Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One notable but often neglected work by him is Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes which highlights the history of the Camisards.
 
I didnt know he was the one who wrote Jekyl and Hyde! (havent read it yet).

Blade

p.s. Happy B-Day Mark!!! and also to our Brother Augustine who is with the Lord!!!
 
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Stevenson said he learned writing from reading the Covenanters.

It is said that his nanny read stories of the Covenanters to him as a youth:

Allison Cunningham ("Cummy" )

Stevenson's incessant illnesses mandated the hiring of a nurse. After two others proved less than completely competent, the Stevensons hired Alison Cunningham ("Cummy") when Stevenson was about eighteen months old. Cummy's fervent Calvinism and the stories she told of the Covenanters--strident seventeenth-century Presbyterians who opposed encroaching Anglicanism--would prove quite influential in the author's career.

A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ; or, The Last Speeches and Testimonies of Those Who Have Suffered for the Truth in Scotland, Since the Year 1680
Edinburgh, [1714].

An example of the heroic stories of the Scottish Covenanters and their religious persecution in the seventeenth century, which "Cummy" read to her young charge. Stevenson's grasp of stylistic archaism and his interest in historical romances can be traced to such early religious reading. He wrote to J. M. Barrie in 1893 that "My style is from the Covenanting writer."

The Pentland Rising: A Page of History
Edinburgh, Andrew Elliot, 1866.

Stevenson's first pamphlet, privately published at his father's expense, tells the story of the bloody Covenanting battle at Rullion Green in 1666.

Stevenson also wrote an essay (published in Lay Morals) on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Pentland Rising (which occured in November 1666).
 
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