Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the 13 November, 1850. His father and grandfather were both successful engineers who had built many of the lighthouses that dotted the Scottish coast, whilst his mother came from a family of lawyers and church ministers.A sickly child whose mother was also often unwell, Stevenson spent much of his childhood with the family nurse, Alison Cunningham. She told him many ghost stories and supernatural tales which seem to resonate throughout Stevenson's later fiction, reappearing in several of his short-stories, such as 'The Body Snatchers', 'The Merry Men' and 'Thrawn Janet'. Read more