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Born in Edinburgh, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) early on rejected the family business of designing and building lighthouses in favor of a writing career. Bell, a Scottish journalist, has captured the short but varied life of this accomplished author in an entertaining and detailed study. Plagued by tuberculosis, the adult Stevenson fled Scotland's rainy climate, opting instead for the French Riviera and later for the United States, where he traveled in search of Fanny Osbourne, the married American he loved. They married in 1880, signalling the start of his most productive period, that of Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). The couple would later travel throughout the South Seas, eventually settling on the island of Samoa, where Stevenson spent his last years.