The Influences In Robert Louis Stevenson's Life

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The influences in one’s life can be the determining factors of success. These influences can be strong or weak, big or small. Robert Louis Stevenson incorporated a lot of his experiences into his writings. His works were greatly influenced by life experiences, his travels, and the people he knew. Stevenson’s life experiences shaped him into the writer he was. In his college years, he attended the Edinburgh University to study architecture in hopes of being apart of his family’s lighthouse building company (biography.com Editors). He did not enjoy architecture, so he then switched his major to law. During this his time in college, he did not perform as well as his family thought he would. He would wear flashy clothes and, instead of studying, drink and visit brothels with his cousin, Bob. All he wanted to do was have fun. Although he …show more content…

He felt that he was called to be a writer, even though his father did not approve. He published his first book of literary work called An Inland Voyage at the age of twenty-eighty (biography.com Editors). All of his life, he was extremely sickly and ill. He suffered from what was most likely undiagnosed tuberculosis. This caused hemorrhaging lungs (biography. com Editors). Writing books and stories was one of the only things he could while on bed rest. In the 1880’s, classics such as The Black Arrow, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were all written at some point in the worst parts of Stevenson’s health (biography.com Editors). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was actually based of a nightmare he once had (Horan, 1). “His method of reading ambiguous, enigmatic personalities was one of Stevenson’s greatest literary contributions”