Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751

Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, and died in Samoa in 1894.

His father and grandfather were both famous engineers, the latter having designed and constructed no fewer than twenty lighthouses, including the Bell Rock. In 1871 he began to read for the Bar, and was called in 1875, but never practised.

From childhood he was bent on a literary career, and when he was only 16 his pamphlet on The Pentland Rising was published.

His first book was An Inland Voyage, 1878; it was followed in 1879 by Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes.