Robert Louis Stevenson

Born into a family of celebrated lighthouse engineers, Stevenson was expected to follow the trade; chronic lung disease, probably tuberculosis, redirected him instead toward law, then travel writing, then fiction, and sent him chasing warmer climates for the rest of his life. He followed the American Fanny Osbourne, whom he'd fall in love with and marry, across the Atlantic in near-poverty, an ordeal he later wrote up himself.

Treasure Island (1883) was invented to entertain his stepson over a rainy vacation; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) reportedly came to him in a nightmare and was drafted in a matter of days. Seeking better health, he eventually settled in Samoa, building an estate called Vailima and involving himself in local politics on islanders' behalf.

He died there suddenly in 1894, and was buried on a mountaintop overlooking the sea.