Robert Louis Stevenson's 175th Birthday: Celebrating the Scottish Neo-Romantic and His Treasures at RUDN University

November 13, 2025, marks the 175th anniversary of the birth of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), a Scottish writer and poet of neo-romantic literature.

 

At the age of 16, he wrote a lengthy historical work on Scottish Protestants, published in a condensed form in an edition of 100 copies (The Pentland Rising, 1866).

 

Modern editions of R.L. Stevenson's early works—his first story, "A Lodging for the Night" (1877), and the novellas of the "Adventures of Prince Florizel" cycle (Latter Day: Arabian Nights, 1878)—can be found in the RUDN University library.

 

His first book, Treasure Island (1883), a commercial success, came together spontaneously. The plot was based on a map drawn by the writer and his stepson, Lloyd Osborne, during their autumn break. The "co-author"'s name appears in the dedication, for example, to the 1924 American edition of "Treasure Island" from the collection of the Rare Book Museum. It was illustrated by the popular artist Frances Brundage (1854-1937), the founder of the cult of angels and doll-like girls. This boys' novel has been translated into Russian since 1886.

 

The RUDN University library presents "Treasure Island" (1981) in the canonical translation by Nikolai Korneevich Chukovsky (1904-1965). The son of "Grandfather Korney" also translated Stevenson's "Heather Ale" (1880), but Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak's (1887-1964) "Heather Honey," which was published during the war, proved more powerful.

 

A modest pocket-sized collection of his "English Ballads and Songs" (1944) is also in the Rare Book Museum collection.

 

The library's collection also includes the first Russian-language edition of Stevenson's wife's diary, "Life in Samoa" (1969), as well as the novella "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886), the enormous fee for which enabled the gravely ill Stevenson to spend the rest of his life in the South Pacific.