Robert Louis Stevenson and family. Scottish novelist Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (left, 1850-1894) left Britain to find a more suitable climate for his poor health. Here, he and his family are in the Hawaiian Islands during their travels in the Pacific in the period from 1888 to 1890 when they settled in Samoa. Stevenson died a few years later aged 44. He had married Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840-1914) in 1880. With them were her children (his stepchildren) from her first marriage, Isobel (1858-1953) and Lloyd (1868-1947), and his mother Margaret (1829-1897). Stevenson was also a poet, essayist, and travel writer.