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The Biographical Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Life
The Biographical Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Life Author:Robert Louis Stevenson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD—1850-59 "I please myself often by saying that I had a Covenanting childhood."—R. L. S., Ms. fragment. "I am one of the... more » few people in the world who do not forget their own lives."—R. L. S., Letters, iii. 71. ROBERT LEWIS BALFOUR STEVENSON was born at No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, on the 13th November 1850, and a few days after his birth was baptised by his grandfather, the minister of Colinton, according to the Scots custom, in his father's house. He was called after his two grandfathers, and to their names that of his mother's family was added.1 1 It was as Robert Louis Stevenson that he was known to all the world, and the earlier variations of his name, remembered but by few, are of small importance. Nevertheless it may be as well to set them down here. In his earliest letters, and down to 1865, the boy signed himself "R. Stevenson." After that he occasionally used "R. L. B. Stevenson," but in 1868 asked his mother in place of this to address him as "Robert Lewis." For the next five years he was generally but not invariably "R. L. Stevenson," until about 1873 the final change is marked by his usage and an undated letter to Mr. Baxter belonging to this period (now the property of the Savile Club). "After several years of feeble and ineffectual endeavour with regard to my third initial (a thing I loathe), I have been led to put myself out of reach of such accident in the future by taking my first two names in full." The change of the name of Lewis from the Scots form to the French was made when he was about eighteen; the exact date is not easy to fix on account of his practice of using the intitial only in his signature at that period. It was only the spelling that Stevenson changed and never the pronunciation: Lewis he remain...« less