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94-510: Suwarrow (also called Suvorov , Suvarou , or Suvarov ) is an island in the northern group of the Cook Islands in the south Pacific Ocean . It is about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) south of the equator and 930 kilometres (580 mi) north-northwest of the capital island of Rarotonga . Suwarrow is a roughly quadrilateral-shaped coral atoll , 80 kilometres (50 mi) in circumference, with over 20 small islets (motu) surrounding

188-427: A "red-hot socialist". But already by age 26 he was writing of looking back on this time "with something like regret. ... Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions." His cousin and biographer Sir Graham Balfour claimed that Stevenson "probably throughout life would, if compelled to vote, have always supported

282-590: A better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill" and a practical demonstration of "the great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life". So that if they cannot be happy in the "handicap race for sixpenny pieces", let them take their own "by-road". In late 1873, when he was 23, Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England when he met two people who became very important to him: Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell and Sidney Colvin . Sitwell

376-497: A central lagoon 19 by 8 kilometres (11.8 by 5.0 mi). Cyclones often create storm surges which sweep over the atoll since its small component of land is extremely low-lying. Although Suwarrow was inhabited by Polynesians during prehistory it was uninhabited when discovered by the Russian-American Company ship Suvorov , which reportedly followed clouds of birds to the atoll on 17 September 1814. (The ship

470-402: A cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean for the following summer. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and

564-404: A detailed chronicle of the intersection of rivalries between the great powers and the first Samoan Civil War . As much as he said he disdained politics—"I used to think meanly of the plumber", he wrote to his friend Sidney Colvin, "but how he shines beside the politician!" —Stevenson felt himself obliged to take sides. He openly allied himself with chief Mataafa, whose rival Malietoa was backed by

658-509: A failure." His mother accounted the revelation "the heaviest affliction" to befall her. "O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is", Stevenson wrote to his friend Charles Baxter, "to have just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world." Stevenson's rejection of the Presbyterian Church and Christian dogma, however, did not turn into lifelong atheism or agnosticism. On February 15, 1878,

752-536: A hard time finding sufficient food. In 1978, the island was declared a National Park of the Cook Islands due to the plentiful marine and bird wild life it supports. The island and surrounding water is Crown land . A proposal to establish an aquaculture operation to farm Tahitian pearls was successfully opposed by Cook Islands environmental NGO, the Taporoporo'anga Ipukarea Society . In October 2011, Russian politician Anton Bakov claimed to have purchased

846-476: A harmonious pattern of its own. Man's one method, whether he reasons or creates, is to half-shut his eyes against the dazzle and confusion of reality...Life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing, and emasculate...The novel, which is a work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are forced and material ... but by its immeasurable difference from life, which

940-581: A large breeding colony of sooty terns , with over 40,000 chicks counted in 2008. It is also a non-breeding site for bristle-thighed curlews . Suwarrow has a rich marine biodiversity, which supports megafauna such as sea turtles , sharks , mantas , and cetaceans including humpback , sperm , and false killer whales . Every five years, the Cook Islands government advertises for the Suwarrow island nature reserve caretaker position. The position

1034-695: A part of the family through her charm and wit. The Stevensons shuttled back and forth between Scotland and the Continent, finally settling in 1884 in the Westbourne district of the southern English seaside town of Bournemouth in Hampshire (now in Dorset ). Stevenson had moved there to benefit from its sea air. They lived in a house Stevenson named 'Skerryvore' after a Scottish lighthouse built by his uncle Alan. From April 1885, 34-year-old Stevenson had

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1128-474: A passenger on Janet Nicoll ; he later returned to Suwarrow to be the island trader. During World War II , Robert Dean Frisbie and several Coastwatchers lived on the largest islet, Anchorage. Frisbie wrote about his experiences in The Island of Desire . In 1942, a cyclone washed away 16 of the 22 islets in the atoll. The coastwatchers left a hut with water tanks behind, and left wild pigs and chickens on

1222-913: A patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary named William Ernest Henley , an energetic and talkative poet with a wooden leg. Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888, and he is often considered to be the inspiration for Long John Silver in Treasure Island . Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that. He made long and frequent trips to

1316-551: A spawn of inspectors, who now begin, note-book in hand, to darken the face of England". He is referring to the steady growth in social legislation in Britain since the first of the Conservative-sponsored Factory Acts (which, in 1833, established a professional Factory Inspectorate ). Stevenson cautioned that this "new waggon-load of laws" points to a future in which our grandchildren might "taste

1410-589: A stranger case still if Robert Louis Stevenson ever forgot Jules Simoneau. While in Monterey, he wrote an evocative article about "the Old Pacific Capital" of Monterey. By December 1879, aged 29, Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco where he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts," in an effort to support himself through his writing. But by

1504-636: A tale of European and American misconduct. His concern for the Polynesians is also found in the South Sea Letters , published in magazines in 1891 (and then in book form as In the South Seas in 1896). In an effort he feared might result in his own deportation, Stevenson helped secure the recall of two European officials. A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892) was

1598-624: Is best known for works such as Treasure Island , Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses . Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Sidney Colvin , Andrew Lang , Edmund Gosse , Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley ,

1692-508: Is designed and significant. It is not clear, however, that in this there was any real basis for disagreement with James. Stevenson had presented James with a copy of Kidnapped , but it was Treasure Island that James favoured. Written as a story for boys, Stevenson had thought it in "no need of psychology or fine writing", but its success is credited with liberating children's writing from the "chains of Victorian didacticism ". During his college years, Stevenson briefly identified himself as

1786-465: Is ever a "compromise") and to invite "anarchy": it is "the sentimentalist preparing the pathway for the brute". In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco from Samuel Merritt and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help." The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered

1880-516: Is staffed between April and October by two persons. The caretakers monitor the atoll's birdlife. As of 2023, the rangers are no longer customs officials, and check in must occur on one of the main Cook islands. Previous caretakers have brought their families with them, so the population was significantly higher, but that is not the case today. The barge that brings them also brings six months of supplies such as canned food, and several more rangers that clean

1974-563: The Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls , who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which returned to him many years later. In August 1880, he sailed with Fanny and Lloyd from New York to Britain and found his parents and his friend Sidney Colvin on the wharf at Liverpool , happy to see him return home. Gradually, his wife was able to patch up differences between father and son and make herself

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2068-559: The American Civil War . Their children were Isobel (or "Belle"), Lloyd and Hervey (who died in 1875). But anger over her husband's infidelities led to a number of separations. In 1875, she had taken her children to France where she and Isobel studied art. By the time Stevenson met her, Fanny was herself a magazine short-story writer of recognised ability. Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, but Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote

2162-647: The Cook Islands Protectorate before the entire protectorate was annexed to New Zealand in 1900. From the 1850s until 1980, the United States laid claim to much of the northern chain under the Guano Islands Act . Despite this, the United States military acknowledged New Zealand sovereignty during World War II operations. The Cook Islands became a self-governing island nation in free association with New Zealand in 1965, and

2256-467: The union with Britain (she had "majestically demonstrated her incapacity to rule Ireland") nor "landlordism" (scarcely more defensible in Ireland than, as he had witnessed it, in the goldfields of California). Rather he protests the readiness to pass "lightly" over crimes—"unmanly murders and the harshest extremes of boycotting "—where these are deemed "political". This he argues is to "defeat law" (which

2350-540: The 27-year-old wrote to his father and stated: Christianity is among other things, a very wise, noble and strange doctrine of life ... You see, I speak of it as a doctrine of life, and as a wisdom for this world ... I have a good heart, and believe in myself and my fellow-men and the God who made us all ... There is a fine text in the Bible, I don't know where, to the effect that all things work together for good for those who love

2444-1098: The Conservative candidate." In 1866, then 15-year-old Stevenson did vote for Benjamin Disraeli , the Tory democrat and future Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, for the Lord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh . But this was against a markedly illiberal challenger, the historian Thomas Carlyle . Carlyle was notorious for his anti-democratic and pro-slavery views. In "The Day After Tomorrow", appearing in The Contemporary Review (April 1887), Stevenson suggested: "we are all becoming Socialists without knowing it". Legislation "grows authoritative, grows philanthropical, bristles with new duties and new penalties, and casts

2538-548: The Germans whose firms were beginning to monopolise copra and cocoa bean processing. Stevenson was alarmed above all by what he perceived as the Samoans' economic innocence—their failure to secure their claim to proprietorship of the land (in a Lockean sense) through improving management and labour. In 1894 just months before his death, he addressed the island chiefs: There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it

2632-676: The Lord. Strange as it may seem to you, everything has been, in one way or the other, bringing me nearer to what I think you would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a manifest God for those who care to look for him. Stevenson did not resume attending church in Scotland. However, he did teach Sunday School lessons in Samoa, and prayers he wrote in his final years were published posthumously. Justifying his rejection of an established profession, in 1877 Stevenson offered "An Apology for Idlers". "A happy man or woman", he reasoned, "is

2726-612: The Northern Cooks regarded as Central Polynesian and the Southern Cooks as Eastern Polynesian. Similarly, the land ecoregion in the Northern Cooks is Central Polynesian tropical moist forest whereas that of the southern chain is Cook Islands tropical moist forest . The islands were settled by Polynesians for several centuries before the first European visitors, Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña , navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós , and their crew reached and named

2820-893: The Pacific Islands Trading Company Limited. Evans remained as the superintendent of the company’s operations in the Pacific. In 1867, Captain Handley B. Sterndale was engaged by the company and sailed with Evans from Melbourne, Australia to the Cook Islands (then known as the Harvey Group). While one ship was lost off the reef of Rarotonga , on 16 October 1867, Sterndale, Evans and 18 men, 2 women and 3 children (who had been engaged in Rarotonga), arrived at Suwarrow where they intended to stay and gather pearl shell, beche-de-mer and copra . Sterndale and

2914-551: The South Seas . Stevenson left Sydney , Australia, on the Janet Nicoll in April 1890 for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands. He intended to produce another book of travel writing to follow his earlier book In the South Seas , but it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship in her account The Cruise of the Janet Nichol .) A fellow passenger

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3008-605: The Stevensons' dinner table. Largely bedridden, Stevenson described himself as living "like a weevil in a biscuit." Yet, despite ill health, during his three years in Westbourne, Stevenson wrote the bulk of his most popular work: Treasure Island , Kidnapped , Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which established his wider reputation), A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods . Thomas Stevenson died in 1887 leaving his 36-year-old son feeling free to follow

3102-457: The US relinquished any last claims to the islands when it signed the 1980 Cook Islands–United States Maritime Boundary Treaty . In general terms, the northern group is the less well economically developed of the two chains, having far less connection with the rest of the world than the southern chain. A compounding factor is the limited economic resources of the islands; though fishing is important to

3196-506: The advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took a second-class passage on the steamship Devonia , in part to save money but also to learn how others travelled and to increase the adventure of the journey. He then travelled overland by train from New York City to California. He later wrote about the experience in The Amateur Emigrant . It was a good experience for his writing, but it broke his health. He

3290-584: The advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate. Stevenson headed for Colorado with his widowed mother and family. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage at Saranac Lake, New York . During the intensely cold winter, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra . He also began The Master of Ballantrae and lightheartedly planned

3384-443: The atoll and declared it the capital of a new Russian Empire . The claim was denied by Prime Minister Henry Puna . Most of the small islets have only herbs and shrubs, with Pemphis acidula and beach heliotrope ( Tournefortia argentea ) growing in abundance. The larger islands have a dense interior vegetation of Cordia subcordata (tou); indeed, the westernmost island, Motu Tou is named after this woodland (Jones 2001). At

3478-675: The autumn of 1863, he spent one term at an English boarding school at Spring Grove in Isleworth in Middlesex (now an urban area of West London). In October 1864, following an improvement to his health, the 13-year-old was sent to Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went to university. In November 1867, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. From

3572-444: The benefits of freedom and common to all, were truly benefits of wealth, and took their value from our neighbour's poverty...Freedom to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently entreated, and driven to their mines and workshops by

3666-609: The capital, on which they built the islands' first two-storey house. Fanny's sister, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, wrote that "it was in Samoa that the word 'home' first began to have a real meaning for these gypsy wanderers". In May 1891, they were joined by Stevenson's mother, Margaret. While his wife set about managing and working the estate, 40-year-old Stevenson took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales"), and began collecting local stories. Often he would exchange these for his own tales. The first work of literature in Samoan

3760-414: The chain to global warming (for the same reason) has also not encouraged economic development of the islands. 10°0′S 160°0′W  /  10.000°S 160.000°W  / -10.000; -160.000 Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson ; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He

3854-531: The child, and he showed a precocious concern for religion. But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from John Bunyan and the Bible as he lay sick in bed and telling tales of the Covenanters . Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in "The Land of Counterpane" in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), dedicating the book to his nurse. Stevenson was an only child, both strange-looking and eccentric, and he found it hard to fit in when he

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3948-414: The company of the novelist Henry James . They had met previously in London and had recently exchanged views in journal articles on the "art of fiction" and thereafter in a correspondence in which they expressed their admiration for each other's work. After James had moved to Bournemouth to help support his invalid sister, Alice , he took up the invitation to pay daily visits to Skerryvore for conversation at

4042-415: The cottage, being attracted by the quiet country life and the feeling of remoteness. It is likely that the time he spent there influenced his later writing as well as his wider outlook on life, particularly his love of nature and of wild places. The house and its romantic location are thought to have inspired several of his works. Each year during his university holidays, Stevenson also travelled to inspect

4136-552: The dying sun, Smiled well content, and to this childish task Around the fire addressed its evening hours. In other respects too, Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian ; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress. Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels. More significantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist . In January 1873, when he

4230-603: The eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King Kalākaua . He befriended the king's niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani , who also had Scottish heritage. He spent time at the Gilbert Islands , Tahiti , New Zealand and the Samoan Islands . During this period, he completed The Master of Ballantrae , composed two ballads based on

4324-455: The elder Stevenson was naturally disappointed, the surprise cannot have been great, and Stevenson's mother reported that he was "wonderfully resigned" to his son's choice. To provide some security, it was agreed that Stevenson should read law (again at Edinburgh University) and be called to the Scottish bar . In his 1887 poetry collection Underwoods , Stevenson muses on his having turned from

4418-412: The end of the 20th century, 3% of all red-tailed tropicbirds in the world (some 400) bred there, as well as 9% of the global population of the lesser frigatebird (about 8500, though only a part of these seem to be present at any one time) (Jones 2001). The atoll has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports, as well as the tropicbirds and frigatebirds,

4512-572: The end of the winter, his health was broken again and he found himself at death's door. Fanny was now divorced and recovered from her own illness, and she came to his bedside and nursed him to recovery. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success." When his father heard of his 28-year-old son's condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period. Fanny and Robert were married in May 1880. She

4606-644: The essay "On falling in love" for The Cornhill Magazine . They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France. In August 1878, she returned to San Francisco and Stevenson remained in Europe, making the walking trip that formed the basis for Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). But he set off to join her in August 1879, aged 28, against

4700-501: The event. In September 1857, when he was six years old, Stevenson went to Mr Henderson's School in India Street, Edinburgh, but because of poor health stayed only a few weeks and did not return until October 1859, aged eight. During his many absences, he was taught by private tutors. In October 1861, aged ten, he went to Edinburgh Academy , an independent school for boys, and stayed there sporadically for about fifteen months. In

4794-513: The exaggerated and romantic world that, as a child, he had entered as proud owner of Skelt's Juvenile Drama—a toy set of cardboard characters who were actors in melodramatic dramas. "A Gossip on Romance" (1882) and "A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's" (1887) imply that it is better to entertain than to instruct. Stevenson very much saw himself in the mould of Sir Walter Scott, a storyteller with an ability to transport his readers away from themselves and their circumstances. He took issue with what he saw as

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4888-399: The family profession: Say not of me that weakly I declined The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, The towers we founded and the lamps we lit, To play at home with paper like a child. But rather say: In the afternoon of time A strenuous family dusted from its hands The sand of granite, and beholding far Along the sounding coast its pyramids And tall memorials catch

4982-472: The family's engineering works. In 1868, this took him to Anstruther and for a stay of six weeks in Wick , where his family was building a sea wall and had previously built a lighthouse. He was to return to Wick several times over his lifetime and included it in his travel writings. He also accompanied his father on his official tour of Orkney and Shetland islands lighthouses in 1869 and spent three weeks on

5076-495: The fifteenth century. His mother's father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton , and her siblings included physician George William Balfour and marine engineer James Balfour . Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder what I inherited from this old minister," Stevenson wrote. "I must suppose, indeed, that he

5170-549: The first editor of his letters after his death. He placed Stevenson's first paid contribution in The Portfolio , an essay titled "Roads". Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang , Edmund Gosse and Leslie Stephen , the editor of The Cornhill Magazine , who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen took Stevenson to visit

5264-539: The first two of those periods in An Island to Oneself (1966 ISBN   0-918024-76-5 ). In 1964, while Neale was in Rarotonga, June von Donop, a former accountant from Honolulu , Hawaii , lived alone in his house on Suwarrow for a week, while her crewmates on the schooner Europe stayed on board their vessel. Michael Swift lived alone on Suwarrow in 1965–66, but he was not familiar with survival techniques and had

5358-432: The group, the coral soil is of poor fertility and fresh water is generally in poor supply. The population is in decline, having reduced from over 2000 in the early 1960s. The higher susceptibility of the chain to tropical cyclones (and the propensity for greater damage due to its low-lying nature) has also caused considerable hardship, with severe damage being recorded after Cyclone Percy in 2005. The vulnerability of

5452-408: The island of Erraid in 1870. He enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest. The voyage with his father pleased him because a similar journey of Walter Scott with Robert Stevenson had provided the inspiration for Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate . In April 1871, Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters. Though

5546-423: The island of San Bernardo in 1595, now widely believed to have been Pukapuka. De Queirós returned to the region in 1606 in charge of his own vessel, making landfall at Rakahanga. The population of the chain was decimated by blackbirding during the 19th century, with the island of Tongareva (now more widely known as Penrhyn ) being almost completely depopulated. At the end of the century, the chain became part of

5640-427: The island on the first day and leave the caretakers behind. The only way to visit the island is with a private yacht or by chartered expedition from Rarotonga, and visitors require permits from the park authorities before being permitted to land. Northern Cook Islands The chain forms a roughly inverted triangular shape, stretching from Penrhyn in the northeast to Pukapuka in the northwest and to Suwarrow in

5734-425: The island to Russia. British sovereignty was proclaimed 22 April 1889. In 1903 the atoll was leased to Lever Brothers , "for the purpose of removing guano or other fertilising substances therefrom, and of planting the land with coconuts, and for collecting pearl-shells, and for other purposes of a like nature." They maintained about thirty persons on the island until a cyclone in 1914 so severely damaged operations that

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5828-460: The island was abandoned. In April 1890 Robert Louis Stevenson , his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson , and her son Lloyd Osbourne were passengers on the trading steamer Janet Nicoll , which called at Suwarrow during a trading cruise around the central Pacific. The journal of Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson was published under the title The Cruise of the Janet Nichol. Jack Buckland was also

5922-607: The islanders were landed along with approximately 4 months supply of food and a water condensing apparatus to produce fresh water. Evans departed on the ship, with the expectation of returning within 4 months with food supplies. By the middle of March 1868, the provisions were exhausted and Evans had not returned. On 17 April Captain Bully Hayes (the notorious blackbirder ) arrived on the brig Rona , with 109 islanders from Niue (then known as Savage Island) who were being transported to Tahiti . Hayes agreed to rescue Sterndale and

6016-432: The islanders were on Suwarrow with a limited supply of provisions and no boats capable of leaving the island. In 1876 the atoll was leased to Henderson and Macfarlane of Auckland, which built a wharf, installed a light on a wooden pyramid, and commenced to gather mother of pearl . The firm's agent, Handley B. Sterndale, in 1877 enacted a dubious transfer to his colleague William J. Hunt, who in turn offered in 1886 to sell

6110-521: The islanders, notwithstanding the Rona was already crowded, with Sterndale and the Islanders being delivered to Rakahanga (Reirson island), from where they eventually were able to travel to Tahiti. Sterndale sold the pearl shell, beche-de-mer, copra and equipment to Hayes. Sterndale later discovered that Evans had travelled to Samoa and sold the ship and departed to Sydney, and concealed that Sterndale and

6204-416: The islet. Later, cats were allowed to run wild on Anchorage Island, to control Polynesian rats which were documented to occur there since the island was discovered by Europeans (Jones 2001) but conceivably were introduced by Polynesian seafarers a longer time ago. New Zealander Tom Neale lived alone on Suwarrow for a total of 16 years in three periods between 1952 and 1977. He described his experience in

6298-456: The land area. Almost all of this population is on the three islands of Pukapuka, Manihiki, and Penrhyn. The two chains are also geographically different: although both chains are formed from coral atolls which grew around volcanoes, the northern islands are far older, and the volcanic cones have sunk. As such, the northern chain is much lower lying than the southern chain. The two island chains are also parts of different marine ecoregions , with

6392-465: The lash of famine. In January 1888, aged 37, in response to American press coverage of the Land War in Ireland, Stevenson penned a political essay (rejected by Scribner's magazine and never published in his lifetime) that advanced a broadly conservative theme: the necessity of "staying internal violence by rigid law". Notwithstanding his title, "Confessions of a Unionist ", Stevenson defends neither

6486-615: The last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island . In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands , his writing turned from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44. A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018, he

6580-494: The legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp . He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously). He made a voyage in 1889 with Lloyd on the trading schooner Equator , visiting Butaritari , Mariki, Apaiang and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands . They spent several months on Abemama with tyrant-chief Tem Binoka , whom Stevenson described in In

6674-444: The mid-19th century (records dispute whether it was in 1848 or 1855), a ship from Tahiti was carrying out salvage work when a box containing NZ$ 15,000 worth of coins was dug up. Some years later, New Zealander Henry Mair found pieces of eight in a turtle nest. Mair became involved in a dispute, the find was covered up, and it has never been rediscovered. John Lavington Evans was the first leasee of Suwarrow, who passes his lease to

6768-679: The neighbourhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau , staying at Barbizon , Grez-sur-Loing and Nemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there. He also travelled to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres. He qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, aged 24, and his father added a brass plate to the Heriot Row house reading "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate". His law studies did influence his books, but he never practised law; all his energies were spent in travel and writing. One of his journeys

6862-474: The pleasures of existence in something far liker an ant-heap that any previous human polity". Yet in reproducing the essay his latter-day libertarian admirers omit his express understanding for the abandonment of Whiggish , classical-liberal notions of laissez faire . "Liberty", Stevenson wrote, "has served us a long while" but like all other virtues "she has taken wages". [Liberty] has dutifully served Mammon; so that many things we were accustomed to admire as

6956-549: The sake of Stevenson's and his mother's health; "Stevenson's cave" in Bridge of Allan was reportedly the inspiration for the character Ben Gunn 's cave dwelling in Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island . Stevenson's parents were both devout Presbyterians , but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy) was more fervently religious. Her mix of Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for

7050-655: The south. The Northern Cook Islands are separated from the Southern Cook Islands by a wide stretch of the Pacific Ocean , with the nearest part of the Southern chain being Palmerston Island , 500 kilometres (310 mi) due south of Suwarrow. With an area of just 21 sq. km. and a population of 1,041 (according to the 2016 census), the islands only account for some 6% of the Cooks' population and 9% of

7144-582: The start he showed no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. This time was more important for the friendships he made with other students in The Speculative Society (an exclusive debating club), particularly with Charles Baxter, who would become Stevenson's financial agent, and with a professor, Fleeming Jenkin , whose house staged amateur drama in which Stevenson took part, and whose biography he would later write. Perhaps most important at this point in his life

7238-577: The sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was 11. Illness was a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin. Contemporaneous views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis or sarcoidosis . The family also summered in the spa town of Bridge of Allan , in North Berwick , and in Peebles for

7332-499: The tendency in French realism to dwell on sordidness and ugliness. In "The Lantern-Bearer" (1888) he appears to take Emile Zola to task for failing to seek out nobility in his protagonists. In "A Humble Remonstrance", Stevenson answers Henry James 's claim in "The Art of Fiction" (1884) that the novel competes with life. Stevenson protests that no novel can ever hope to match life's complexity; it merely abstracts from life to produce

7426-586: Was Jack Buckland , whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892), which Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together. Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894. In December 1889, 39-year-old Stevenson and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and there he and Fanny decided to settle. In January 1890 they purchased 314 + 1 ⁄ 4 acres (127.2 ha) at Vailima, some miles inland from Apia

7520-592: Was 22, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: "Disregard everything our parents have taught us". Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth. Stevenson no longer believed in God and had grown tired of pretending to be something he was not: "am I to live my whole life as one falsehood?" His father professed himself devastated: "You have rendered my whole life

7614-550: Was 40; he was 29. He said that he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom." He travelled with his new wife and her son Lloyd north of San Francisco to Napa Valley and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena (today designated Robert Louis Stevenson State Park ). He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters . He met Charles Warren Stoddard , co-editor of

7708-399: Was a 34-year-old woman with a son, who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a warm correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as " Madonna "). Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was

7802-905: Was a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, a friend from the Speculative Society, a frequent travel companion, and the author of The Art of Golf (1887). This trip was the basis of his first travel book An Inland Voyage (1878). Stevenson had a long correspondence with fellow Scot J.M. Barrie . He invited Barrie to visit him in Samoa , but the two never met. The canoe voyage with Simpson brought Stevenson to Grez-sur-Loing in September 1876, where he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914), born in Indianapolis . She had married at age 17 and moved to Nevada to rejoin husband Samuel after his participation in

7896-490: Was a cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (known as "Bob"), a lively and light-hearted young man who, instead of the family profession, had chosen to study art. In 1867, Stevenson's family took a lease on Swanston Cottage, in the village of Swanston at the foot of the Pentland Hills , for use as a summer holiday home. They held the lease until 1880. During their tenancy, the young Robert Louis made frequent use of

7990-669: Was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt , to Lamb , to Wordsworth , to Sir Thomas Browne , to Defoe , to Hawthorne , to Montaigne , to Baudelaire and to Obermann . Robert Lewis Stevenson, " Memories and Portraits ", Chapter IV, relating how he practiced writing in his youth Stevenson's critical essays on literature contain "few sustained analyses of style or content". In "A Penny Plain and Two-pence Coloured" (1884) he suggests that his own approach owed much to

8084-410: Was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them." Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851. The family moved again to

8178-561: Was his translation of The Bottle Imp (1891) , which presents a Pacific-wide community as the setting for a moral fable. Immersing himself in the islands' culture, occasioned a "political awakening": it placed Stevenson "at an angle" to the rival great powers , Britain, Germany and the United States whose warships were common sights in Samoan harbours. He understood that, as in the Scottish Highlands (comparisons with his homeland "came readily"), an indigenous clan society

8272-553: Was named after Russian general Alexander Suvorov , who appears as "Suwarrow" in Lord Byron 's epic poem Don Juan and also in Alaric Alexander Watts ' alliterative poem "The Siege of Belgrade".) It has been only intermittently inhabited since. The atoll ' s name has also been spelled variously as Souvorow , Souwaroff , and Souworoff . "Suwarrow" is the official spelling adopted by New Zealand . In

8366-665: Was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California , where some local ranchers nursed him back to health. He stayed for a time at the French Hotel located at 530 Houston Street, now a museum dedicated to his memory called the " Stevenson House ". While there, he often dined "on the cuff," as he said, at a nearby restaurant run by Frenchman Jules Simoneau, which stood at what is now Simoneau Plaza; several years later, he sent Simoneau an inscribed copy of his novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), writing that it would be

8460-399: Was proud of this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father had found them and had told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business." He paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at 16, entitled The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 . It was an account of the Covenanters' rebellion and was published in 1866, the 200th anniversary of

8554-468: Was ranked just behind Charles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world. Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh , Scotland, on 13 November 1850 to Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife, Margaret Isabella (born Balfour, 1829–1897). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, he changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and he dropped "Balfour" in 1873. Lighthouse design

8648-568: Was sent to a nearby school at age 6, a problem repeated at age 11 when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy ; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at Colinton . His frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, so he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, learning at age 7 or 8, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse, and he compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father

8742-468: Was the family's profession; Thomas's father (Robert's grandfather) was the civil engineer Robert Stevenson , and Thomas's brothers (Robert's uncles) Alan and David were in the same field. Thomas's maternal grandfather Thomas Smith had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family were gentry , tracing their lineage back to Alexander Balfour, who had held the lands of Inchrye in Fife in

8836-425: Was unprepared for the arrival of foreigners who played upon its existing rivalries and divisions. As the external pressures upon Samoan society grew, tensions soon descended into several inter-clan wars. No longer content to be a "romancer", Stevenson became a reporter and an agitator, firing off letters to The Times which "rehearsed with an ironic twist that surely owed something to his Edinburgh legal training",

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