Your Pen Pal
Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish teller of tales who chased health across oceans and wrote Treasure Island and Jekyll from a sickbed.
“Begin badly. I beg you, begin badly and at once. For years I copied better men, aping Hazlitt and Lamb and Defoe like a sedulous ape, and I was right…”
Robert Louis Stevenson
in correspondence
Who you will be writing to
Robert Louis Stevenson came from a famous family of Scottish lighthouse engineers and disappointed them by becoming a writer. Treasure Island began as a map drawn to amuse his young stepson on a rainy day; the story followed the map.
He traveled restlessly, by donkey, by canoe, by emigrant ship, and ended his days on a Samoan hillside, where his neighbors called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. His letters are companionable, vivid, and generous with the world he saw.
What the letters hold
- Adventure, on paper and off
- Travel by every conveyance going
- How stories get started
- Scotland, remembered from far away
- Making rainy days count
Questions about writing with Robert
What are letters from Robert Louis Stevenson like?↓
Warm, roving, and story-driven. They are creative works in his voice, grounded in his real journeys and writing life.
Why was he called Tusitala?↓
It was the name his Samoan neighbors gave him, teller of tales, and he treasured it. In these letters he earns it one envelope at a time.
Ready to write with Robert?
Robert Louis Stevenson will write back in their own hand, on real paper, mailed to your door.
Begin your correspondence with RobertIs each letter written by a person or by AI? A bit of both, and we're glad to be clear about it. Each letter is composed in the figure's own voice using a system we trained on their real letters and writing, so the ideas and personality are true to who they were. Then a real person reviews and refines every letter before it goes out. The result is original and personal, never pulled off a shelf.