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60 free Robert Louis Stevenson trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Robert Louis Stevenson trivia quiz follows the author of Treasure Island from a sickly childhood in Edinburgh to a hillside grave in Samoa. The early questions cover the family of lighthouse engineers he refused to join, the nurse to whom he dedicated A Child's Garden of Verses, his rebellion against his parents' religion, the law degree he never used, and the canoe and donkey journeys that produced his first travel books. The middle of the quiz turns to Fanny Osbourne and the near-fatal journey to California to marry her, the honeymoon in a mining camp, the years in Bournemouth when most of the famous books were written, and the books themselves: the map drawn for a stepson that became Treasure Island, the dream that became Jekyll and Hyde and the manuscript that may have been burned, the Appin murder behind Kidnapped, and the models for Long John Silver. The last questions cover the Pacific: the yacht Casco, King Kalākaua, the leper colony on Molokaʻi, the estate at Vailima, the name Tusitala, his letters to The Times about Samoa, his sudden death at 44 and the epitaph on Mount Vaea. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Stevenson and his major novels.
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Q 01What was the family profession that Stevenson's father, grandfather and uncles all followed?
Lighthouse engineering
His grandfather Robert Stevenson built the Bell Rock light, and his uncle Alan built Skerryvore, the name Louis later gave his Bournemouth house.
Q 02At about what age did Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson change 'Lewis' to 'Louis'?
18
He dropped 'Balfour', his mother's maiden name, in 1873.
Q 03At which Edinburgh address was Stevenson born on 13 November 1850?
8 Howard Place
The family moved to a damp house at Inverleith Terrace in 1851 and then to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when he was six.
Q 04To whom did Stevenson dedicate A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)?
His nurse Alison Cunningham
'Cummy' read him Bunyan and the Bible and told tales of the Covenanters; her fervent Calvinism was also an early source of his nightmares.
Q 05Stevenson's first publication, printed at his father's expense when he was 16, was an account of what?
The Covenanters' rebellion of 1666
The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 appeared in 1866, on the rebellion's 200th anniversary.
Q 06What subject did Stevenson enrol to study at the University of Edinburgh in 1867?
Engineering
He showed no enthusiasm and devoted his energy to avoiding lectures; the debating Speculative Society mattered far more to him.
Q 07Having abandoned his first degree, Stevenson qualified in July 1875 for what?
The Scottish bar
His father added a brass plate reading 'R.L. Stevenson, Advocate' to the Heriot Row house, but he never practised law.
Q 08In 1873 Stevenson's father discovered the constitution of a society his son belonged to, beginning 'Disregard everything our parents have taught us.' What was it called?
The LJR Club
The letters stood for Liberty, Justice, Reverence; the discovery led Stevenson to admit he no longer believed in God, and his father declared his life 'a failure'.
Q 09Which magazine editor took Stevenson to visit hospital patient William Ernest Henley?
Leslie Stephen
Henley became a close friend and is often considered the model for Long John Silver, until a quarrel ended the friendship in 1888.
Q 10Stevenson's first travel book, An Inland Voyage (1878), recounts a journey by what means through Belgium and France?
Canoe
His companion was Sir Walter Simpson, later author of The Art of Golf.
Q 11What was the name of the donkey in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes?
Modestine
He sold her at Saint-Jean-du-Gard; the book is among the first to treat hiking and camping as recreation and describes one of the first sleeping bags.
Q 12In which French village did Stevenson meet his future wife Fanny Osbourne in September 1876?
Grez-sur-Loing
She was an American magazine writer, ten years his senior, separated from an unfaithful husband and studying art with her daughter.
Q 13Stevenson crossed the Atlantic in 1879 to join Fanny aboard the Devonia. How did he travel?
Second class
He chose it partly to save money and partly to see how others travelled, an experience he wrote up in The Amateur Emigrant; the journey broke his health.
Q 21Treasure Island began in the summer of 1881 as a way to amuse whom during bad weather at Braemar?
His 12-year-old stepson Lloyd
He drew a map of an island and built the story around it, writing to a friend that 'if this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day'.
Q 22What is the name of the inn where Treasure Island opens and where Billy Bones lodges?
The Admiral Benbow
Jim Hawkins is the innkeeper's son; the blind beggar Pew later delivers the black spot there.
Q 23Who captains the Hispaniola on the voyage to Treasure Island?
Alexander Smollett
Q 14Ranchers in which California town nursed Stevenson back to health after crossing America?
Monterey
He lodged at the French Hotel, later the Stevenson House museum, and dined 'on the cuff' at Jules Simoneau's restaurant.
Q 15How old were Fanny and Louis when they married in May 1880?
40 and 29
He described himself as 'a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom'.
Q 16Where did the newlyweds spend their honeymoon, described in The Silverado Squatters?
An abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena
The site in the Napa Valley is now Robert Louis Stevenson State Park.
Q 17Stevenson named his Bournemouth house 'Skerryvore' after what?
A lighthouse built by his uncle
He lived there from 1884 to 1887, 'like a weevil in a biscuit', and wrote most of his most popular work; the house was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War.
Q 18Which American novelist paid daily visits to Skerryvore for dinner-table conversation from 1885?
Henry James
They had traded views on 'the art of fiction' in print; Stevenson gave him Kidnapped, but James preferred Treasure Island.
Q 19What was the original title of Treasure Island?
The Sea Cook
It was serialised in Young Folks in 1881–82 under the pseudonym 'Captain George North' before Cassell published it as a book in November 1883.
Q 20Under what pseudonym was Treasure Island first serialised in the magazine Young Folks?
Captain George North
The magazine version ran from 1881 to 1882 as Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola.
He rightly distrusts the crew Squire Trelawney hired; first mate Mr Arrow, a drunkard, is lost overboard in a storm.
Q 24Which marooned former pirate on Treasure Island has a craving for cheese?
Ben Gunn
He had already dug up most of Flint's treasure and hidden it in his cave; a cave at Bridge of Allan is said to have inspired his home.
Q 25Long John Silver's parrot is named after which dead pirate captain?
Flint
Flint, who buried the treasure, had captained a ship called the Walrus.
Q 26Treasure Island 'came out of' which Charles Kingsley book, where Stevenson found the Dead Man's Chest?
At Last
He also drew on Captain Johnson's History of the Notorious Pirates and admitted borrowing freely from earlier authors.
Q 27What is the profession of Gabriel John Utterson in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?
Lawyer
He and his cousin Enfield are on their weekly walk when they pass the mysterious door that begins the story.
Q 28According to Stevenson's 'A Chapter on Dreams', where did the idea for Jekyll and Hyde come from?
A dream
The dream gave him 'three scenes, and the central idea of a voluntary change becoming involuntary'.
Q 29What did Stevenson reportedly do with the first draft of Jekyll and Hyde after Fanny criticised it?
Burned it
He then rewrote the whole story in three to six days; scholars debate whether the burning really happened.
Q 30Which MP does Mr Hyde beat to death with a cane in Jekyll and Hyde?
Sir Danvers Carew
Half the broken cane is left at the scene, and Utterson recognises it as one he had given Jekyll.