Robert Louis Stevenson has searched in vain…

Robert Louis Stevenson has searched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his state of health from 1880 to 1887, spending his summers at various places in Scotland and England, including Westbourne, Dorset, a residential area in Bournemouth.

It was during his time in Bournemouth that he wrote the story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, naming one of the characters Mr. Poole after the town of Poole which is situated next to Bournemouth.

In Westbourne, he named his house Skerryvore after the tallest lighthouse in Scotland, which his uncle Alan had built (1838-1844).

In the wintertime, Stevenson travels to France and lives at Davos-Plat and the Chalet de Solitude at Hyères, where, for a time, he had enjoyed almost complete happiness.

In spite of his ill health, he has produced the bulk of his best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the story that has established his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods.

At Skerryvore he had given a copy of Kidnapped to his friend and frequent visitor Henry James.

When his father died in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate, and he started with his mother and family for Colorado.

But after landing in New York, they decide to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage.

During the intensely cold winter Stevenson writes some of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra, begins The Master of Ballantrae, and lightheartedly plans, for the following summer, a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean.