Robert Louis Stevenson

Moral Emblems Robert Louis Stevenson

Created the words and illustrations for his Moral Emblems while he was staying in the mountain resort of Davos in Switzerland. Stevenson was feared to be dying from tuberculosis of the lung ('consumption') at the time. The family was struggling financially, and the printing, making and hawking of the chapbooks kept Stevenson's young stepson Lloyd Osbourne busy. The mock simplicity of Stevenson's verse is a knowing imitation of the many moral tales that were to be found in religious chapbooks.