document_title: Robert Louis Stevenson

question_text: when did robert louis stevenson wrote his first book

text: Robert Louis Stevenson

text: Life[edit]

text: Childhood and youth[edit]

text: Stevenson was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 13 November 1850, to Thomas Stevenson (1818–87), a leading lighthouse engineer, and his wife Margaret Isabella (born Balfour; 1829–97). He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, Stevenson changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and in 1873, he dropped "Balfour".[5][6]

text: Lighthouse design was the family's profession: Thomas's father (Robert's grandfather) was the famous civil engineer Robert Stevenson, and both of Thomas's brothers (Robert's uncles) Alan and David, were in the same field.[7] Indeed, even Thomas's maternal grandfather, Thomas Smith, had been in the same profession. However, Robert's mother's family were not of the same profession. Margaret's natal family, the Balfours, were gentry, tracing their lineage back to a certain Alexander Balfour who had held the lands of Inchyra in Fife in the fifteenth century. Margaret's father, Lewis Balfour (1777–1860), was a minister of the Church of Scotland at nearby Colinton,[8] and her siblings included the physician George William Balfour and the marine engineer James Balfour. Stevenson spent the greater part of his boyhood holidays in his maternal grandfather's house. "Now I often wonder," wrote Stevenson, "what I inherited from this old minister. I must suppose, indeed, that he was fond of preaching sermons, and so am I, though I never heard it maintained that either of us loved to hear them."[9]

text: Lewis Balfour and his daughter both had weak chests, so they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Stevenson inherited a tendency to coughs and fevers, exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in 1851.[10] The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was eleven. Illness would be a recurrent feature of his adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.[11] Contemporary views were that he had tuberculosis, but more recent views are that it was bronchiectasis[12] or even sarcoidosis.[13]

text: Stevenson's parents were both devout and serious Presbyterians, but the household was not strict in its adherence to Calvinist principles. His nurse, Alison Cunningham (known as Cummy),[14] was more fervently religious. Her Calvinism and folk beliefs were an early source of nightmares for the child, and he showed a precocious concern for religion.[15] But she also cared for him tenderly in illness, reading to him from Bunyan and the Bible as he lay sick in bed and telling tales of the Covenanters. Stevenson recalled this time of sickness in "The Land of Counterpane" in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885),[16] dedicating the book to his nurse.[17]

text: An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at age six, a problem repeated at age eleven when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at Colinton.[18] In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, so he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, first learning at age seven or eight, but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse.[19] He compulsively wrote stories throughout his childhood. His father was proud of this interest; he had also written stories in his spare time until his own father found them and told him to "give up such nonsense and mind your business."[7] He paid for the printing of Robert's first publication at sixteen, an account of the Covenanters' rebellion, which was published on its two hundredth anniversary, The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666 (1866).[20]

text: Education[edit]

text: In September 1857, Stevenson went to Mr Henderson's School in India Street, Edinburgh, but because of poor health stayed only a few weeks and did not return until October 1859. During his many absences he was taught by private tutors. In October 1861, he went to Edinburgh Academy, an independent school for boys, and stayed there sporadically for about fifteen months. In the autumn of 1863, he spent one term at an English boarding school at Spring Grove in Isleworth in Middlesex (now an urban area of West London). In October 1864, following an improvement to his health, he was sent to Robert Thomson's private school in Frederick Street, Edinburgh, where he remained until he went to university.[21] In November 1867, Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh to study engineering. He showed from the start no enthusiasm for his studies and devoted much energy to avoiding lectures. This time was more important for the friendships he made with other students in the Speculative Society (an exclusive debating club), particularly with Charles Baxter, who would become Stevenson's financial agent, and with a professor, Fleeming Jenkin, whose house staged amateur drama in which Stevenson took part, and whose biography he would later write.[22] Perhaps most important at this point in his life was a cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (known as "Bob"), a lively and light-hearted young man who, instead of the family profession, had chosen to study art.[23] Each year during vacations, Stevenson travelled to inspect the family's engineering works—to Anstruther and Wick in 1868, with his father on his official tour of Orkney and Shetland islands lighthouses in 1869, and for three weeks to the island of Erraid in 1870. He enjoyed the travels more for the material they gave for his writing than for any engineering interest. The voyage with his father pleased him because a similar journey of Walter Scott with Robert Stevenson had provided the inspiration for Scott's 1822 novel The Pirate.[24] In April 1871, Stevenson notified his father of his decision to pursue a life of letters. Though the elder Stevenson was naturally disappointed, the surprise cannot have been great, and Stevenson's mother reported that he was "wonderfully resigned" to his son's choice. To provide some security, it was agreed that Stevenson should read Law (again at Edinburgh University) and be called to the Scottish bar.[25] In his 1887 poetry collection Underwoods, Stevenson muses on his having turned from the family profession:[26]

text:
Say not of me that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded and the lamps we lit,
To play at home with paper like a child.
But rather say: In the afternoon of time
A strenuous family dusted from its hands
The sand of granite, and beholding far
Along the sounding coast its pyramids
And tall memorials catch the dying sun,
Smiled well content, and to this childish task
Around the fire addressed its evening hours.

text: In other respects too, Stevenson was moving away from his upbringing. His dress became more Bohemian; he already wore his hair long, but he now took to wearing a velveteen jacket and rarely attended parties in conventional evening dress.[27] Within the limits of a strict allowance, he visited cheap pubs and brothels.[28] More importantly, he had come to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist.[29] In January 1873, his father came across the constitution of the LJR (Liberty, Justice, Reverence) Club, of which Stevenson and his cousin Bob were members, which began: "Disregard everything our parents have taught us". Questioning his son about his beliefs, he discovered the truth, leading to a long period of dissension with both parents:[30]

text: What a damned curse I am to my parents! As my father said "You have rendered my whole life a failure". As my mother said "This is the heaviest affliction that has ever befallen me". O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have damned the happiness of (probably) the only two people who care a damn about you in the world.

text: Early writing and travels[edit]

text: Stevenson was visiting a cousin in England in late 1873 when he met two people who became very important to him—Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell. Sitwell was a 34-year-old woman with a son, who was separated from her husband. She attracted the devotion of many who met her, including Colvin, who eventually married her in 1901. Stevenson was also drawn to her, and they kept up a heated correspondence over several years in which he wavered between the role of a suitor and a son (he addressed her as "Madonna").[31] Colvin became Stevenson's literary adviser and was the first editor of Stevenson's letters after his death. Soon after their first meeting, he had placed Stevenson's first paid contribution in The Portfolio—an essay titled "Roads".[32]

text: Stevenson was soon active in London literary life, becoming acquainted with many of the writers of the time, including Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse,[33] and Leslie Stephen, the editor of the Cornhill Magazine who took an interest in Stevenson's work. Stephen in turn introduced him to a more important friend while visiting Edinburgh in 1875. He took Stevenson with him to visit a patient at the Edinburgh Infirmary named William Ernest Henley, an energetic and talkative man with a wooden leg. Henley became a close friend and occasional literary collaborator, until a quarrel broke up the friendship in 1888. Henley is often seen as the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.[34]

text: Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874 and settled down to his studies, but he returned to France several times after that.[35] He made long and frequent trips to the neighborhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at Barbizon, Grez-sur-Loing, and Nemours and becoming a member of the artists' colonies there, as well as to Paris to visit galleries and the theatres.[36] He qualified for the Scottish bar in July 1875, and his father added a brass plate to the Heriot Row house reading "R.L. Stevenson, Advocate". His law studies did influence his books, but he never practised law;[37] all his energies were spent in travel and writing. One of his journeys was a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, a friend from the Speculative Society, a frequent travel companion, and the author of The Art of Golf (1887). This trip was the basis of his first travel book An Inland Voyage (1878).[38]

text: Marriage[edit]

text: The canoe voyage with Simpson brought Stevenson to Grez in September 1876, where he first met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne (1840–1914). Born in Indianapolis, she had married at age seventeen and moved to Nevada to rejoin husband Samuel after his participation in the American Civil War. That marriage produced three children: Isobel (or "Belle"), Lloyd, and Hervey (who died in 1875). But anger over her husband's infidelities led to a number of separations. In 1875, she had taken her children to France, where she and Isobel studied art.[39]

text: Although Stevenson returned to Britain shortly after this first meeting, Fanny apparently remained in his thoughts, and he wrote an essay, "On falling in love", for the Cornhill Magazine.[40] They met again early in 1877 and became lovers. Stevenson spent much of the following year with her and her children in France.[41] In August 1878, Fanny returned to San Francisco, California. Stevenson at first remained in Europe, making the walking trip that would form the basis for Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). But in August 1879, he set off to join her, against the advice of his friends and without notifying his parents. He took second-class passage on the steamship Devonia, in part to save money but also to learn how others traveled and to increase the adventure of the journey.[42] From New York City, he traveled overland by train to California. He later wrote about the experience in The Amateur Emigrant. Although it was good experience for his literature, it broke his health.

text: He was near death when he arrived in Monterey, California, where some local ranchers nursed him back to health. In Monterey he stayed for a time at the French Hotel (located at 530 Houston Street), now called the "Stevenson House" after him and now a museum dedicated to his memory. While there, he often dined "on the cuff," as he said, at a nearby restaurant run by a Frenchman, Jules Simoneau, that stood at what is now Simoneau Plaza; several years later, he sent Simoneau an inscribed copy of his novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), writing that it would be a stranger case still if Robert Louis Stevenson ever forgot Jules Simoneau. While in Monterey, Stevenson wrote an evocative article about "the Old Pacific Capital", Monterey.

text: By December 1879, Stevenson had recovered his health enough to continue to San Francisco, where for several months he struggled "all alone on forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy thoughts,"[43] in an effort to support himself through his writing. But by the end of the winter, his health was broken again and he found himself at death's door. Fanny, now divorced and recovered from her own illness, came to Stevenson's bedside and nursed him to recovery. "After a while," he wrote, "my spirit got up again in a divine frenzy, and has since kicked and spurred my vile body forward with great emphasis and success."[44] When his father heard of his condition, he cabled him money to help him through this period.

text: Fanny and Robert were married in May 1880, although, as he said, he was "a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem of mortality than a bridegroom."[45] With his new wife and her son, Lloyd,[46] he travelled north of San Francisco to Napa Valley and spent a summer honeymoon at an abandoned mining camp on Mount Saint Helena. He wrote about this experience in The Silverado Squatters. He met Charles Warren Stoddard, co-editor of the Overland Monthly and author of South Sea Idylls, who urged Stevenson to travel to the South Pacific, an idea which would return to him many years later. In August 1880, he sailed with Fanny and Lloyd from New York to Britain and found his parents and his friend Sidney Colvin on the wharf at Liverpool, happy to see him return home. Gradually, his new wife was able to patch up differences between father and son and make herself a part of the new family through her charm and wit.

text: Attempted settlement in Europe and the US[edit]

text: For the next seven years, between 1880 and 1887, Stevenson searched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his state of health. He spent his summers at various places in Scotland and England, including Westbourne, Dorset, a residential area in Bournemouth. It was during his time in Bournemouth that he wrote the story Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, naming one of the characters (Mr Poole) after the town of Poole, which is situated next to Bournemouth. In Westbourne he named his house Skerryvore after the tallest lighthouse in Scotland, which his uncle Alan had built (1838–1844). In the wintertime, Stevenson travelled to France and lived at Davos Platz[47] and the Chalet de Solitude at Hyères, where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. "I have so many things to make life sweet for me," he wrote, "it seems a pity I cannot have that other one thing—health. But though you will be angry to hear it, I believe, for myself at least, what is is best. I believed it all through my worst days, and I am not ashamed to profess it now."[48] In spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk of his best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widely popular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the story which established his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, A Child's Garden of Verses and Underwoods. At Skerryvore he gave a copy of Kidnapped to his friend and frequent visitor Henry James.[49]

text: When his father died in 1887, Stevenson felt free to follow the advice of his physician to try a complete change of climate, and he started with his mother and family for Colorado. But after landing in New York, they decided to spend the winter at Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks at a cure cottage now known as Stevenson Cottage. During the intensely cold winter, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays, including Pulvis et Umbra, began The Master of Ballantrae, and lightheartedly planned, for the following summer, a cruise to the southern Pacific Ocean. "The proudest moments of my life," he wrote, "have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romantic garment over my shoulders."[50]

text: Politics[edit]

text: Much like his father, Stevenson remained a staunch Tory for most of his life. His cousin and biographer, Sir Graham Balfour, said that "he probably throughout life would, if compelled to vote, have always supported the Conservative candidate."[51] In 1866, Stevenson voted for Benjamin Disraeli, future Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, over Thomas Carlyle, for the role of Lord Rectorship of the University of Edinburgh.[52] During his college years, he briefly identified himself as a "red-hot socialist". By 1877, at only twenty-six years of age and before having written most of his major fictional works, Stevenson reflected: "For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret. I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men [...] Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better—I dare say it is deplorably for the worse."[53]

text: Journey to the Pacific[edit]

text: In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The vessel "plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far from any hand of help."[54] The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he spent much time with and became a good friend of King Kalākaua. He befriended the king's niece, Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who also had a link to Scottish heritage. He spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, and the Samoan Islands. During this period, he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. He witnessed the Samoan crisis. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously),[55] an account of the 1888 cruise which Stevenson and Fanny undertook on the Casco from the Hawaiian Islands to the Marquesas and Tuamotu islands. An 1889 voyage, this time with Lloyd, on the trading schooner Equator, visiting Butaritari, Mariki, Apaiang, and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands, (also known as the Kingsmills) now Kiribati.[56] During the 1889 voyage, they spent several months on Abemama with the tyrant-chief Tem Binoka, of Abemama, Aranuka, and Kuria. Stevenson extensively described Binoka in In the South Seas.[56]

text: One particular open letter from this period stands as testimony to his activism and indignation at the pettiness of the "powers that be", in the person of a Presbyterian minister in Honolulu called Charles McEwen Hyde. During his time in the Hawaiian Islands, Stevenson had visited Molokai and the leper colony there, shortly after the demise of Father Damien. When Dr. Hyde wrote a letter to a fellow clergyman speaking ill of Father Damien, Stevenson wrote a scathing open letter of rebuke to Dr. Hyde.[57] Soon afterwards, in April 1890, Stevenson left Sydney on the Janet Nicoll for his third and final voyage among the South Seas islands.[58]

text: While Stevenson intended to produce another book of travel writing to follow his earlier book In the South Seas, it was his wife who eventually published her journal of their third voyage. (Fanny misnames the ship as the Janet Nichol in her account of the 1890 voyage, The Cruise of the Janet Nichol.)[59] A fellow passenger was Jack Buckland, whose stories of life as an island trader became the inspiration for the character of Tommy Hadden in The Wrecker (1892), which Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne wrote together.[60][61] Buckland visited the Stevensons at Vailima in 1894.[62]

text: Last years[edit]

text: In 1890, Stevenson purchased a tract of about 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here, after two aborted attempts to visit Scotland, he established himself, after much work, upon his estate in the village of Vailima. He took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales", i.e. a storyteller). His influence spread to the Samoans, who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics. He was convinced the European officials appointed to rule the Samoans were incompetent, and after many futile attempts to resolve the matter, he published A Footnote to History. This was such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson feared for a time it would result in his own deportation. When things had finally blown over he wrote to Colvin, who came from a family of distinguished colonial administrators, "I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!"[63]

text: The Stevensons were on friendly terms with some of the colonial leaders and their families. At one point, he formally donated, by deed of gift, his birthday to the daughter of the American Land Commissioner Henry Clay Ide since she was born on Christmas Day and had no birthday celebration separate from the family's Christmas celebrations. This led to a strong bond between the Stevenson and Ide families.[64][65]

text: In addition to building his house and clearing his land and helping the Samoans in many ways, he found time to work at his writing. He felt that "there was never any man had so many irons in the fire".[66] He wrote The Beach of Falesa, Catriona (titled David Balfour in the US),[67] The Ebb-Tide, and the Vailima Letters during this period.

text: Stevenson grew depressed and wondered if he had exhausted his creative vein as he had been "overworked bitterly".[68] He felt that with each fresh attempt, the best he could write was "ditch-water".[69] He even feared that he might again become a helpless invalid. He rebelled against this idea: "I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse — ay, to be hanged, rather than pass again through that slow dissolution."[70] He then suddenly had a return of his old energy and he began work on Weir of Hermiston. "It's so good that it frightens me," he is reported to have exclaimed.[71] He felt that this was the best work he had done. He was convinced, "sick and well, I have had splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little ... take it all over, damnation and all, would hardly change with any man of my time."[72]

text: On 3 December 1894, Stevenson was talking to his wife and straining to open a bottle of wine when he suddenly exclaimed, "What's that!", asked his wife "Does my face look strange?" and collapsed.[73] He died within a few hours, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was forty-four years old. The Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing their Tusitala upon their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea on land donated by British Acting Vice Consul Thomas Trood.[74][75] Stevenson had always wanted his 'Requiem' inscribed on his tomb:[76]

text: However, the piece is misquoted in many places, with an extra "the", including on his tomb:

text: Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epigraph was translated to a Samoan song of grief[77] which is well-known and still sung in Samoa.

text: Manuscripts[edit]

text: Half of Stevenson's original manuscripts are lost, including those of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, and The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson's heirs sold Stevenson's papers during World War I; many Stevenson documents were auctioned off in 1918.[78]

text: Musical compositions[edit]

text: Besides playing the piano and flageolet, Stevenson wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements, including solos, duets, trios and quartets for various combinations of flageolet, flute, clarinet, violin, guitar, mandolin, and piano. His works include ten songs written to his own poetry and with original or arranged melodies. In 1968, Robert Hughes arranged a number of Stevenson's works for chamber orchestra, which toured the Pacific Northwest that year.

text: Modern reception[edit]

text: Stevenson was a celebrity in his own time, but with the rise of modernist literature after World War I, he was seen for much of the 20th century as a writer of the second class, relegated to children's literature and horror genres.[79] Condemned by literary figures such as Virginia Woolf (daughter of his early mentor Leslie Stephen) and her husband Leonard, he was gradually excluded from the canon of literature taught in schools.[79] His exclusion reached a height when in the 1973 2,000-page Oxford Anthology of English Literature Stevenson was entirely unmentioned; and The Norton Anthology of English Literature excluded him from 1968 to 2000 (1st–7th editions), including him only in the 8th edition (2006).[79]

text: The late 20th century saw the start of a re-evaluation of Stevenson as an artist of great range and insight, a literary theorist, an essayist and social critic, a witness to the colonial history of the Pacific Islands, and a humanist.[79] Even as early as 1965, the pendulum had begun to swing: he was praised by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a co-originator with H. Rider Haggard of the Age of the Story Tellers.[80] He is now being re-evaluated as a peer of authors such as Joseph Conrad (whom Stevenson influenced with his South Seas fiction), and Henry James, with new scholarly studies and organisations devoted to Stevenson.[79] Throughout the vicissitudes of his scholarly reception, Stevenson has remained popular worldwide. According to the Index Translationum, Stevenson is ranked the 26th most translated author in the world, ahead of fellow nineteenth-century writers Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe.[1]

text: Monuments and commemoration[edit]

text: The Writers' Museum near Edinburgh's Royal Mile devotes a room to Stevenson, containing some of his personal possessions from childhood through to adulthood.

text: The Stevenson House at 530 Houston Street in Monterey, California, formerly the French Hotel, memorializes Stevenson's 1879 stay in "the Old Pacific Capital", as he was crossing the United States to join his future wife, Fanny Osbourne. The Stevenson House museum is graced with a superb bas relief depicting the sickly author writing in bed.

text: Robert Louis Stevenson's former home in Vailima, Samoa is now a museum dedicated to the later years of his life. The museum collection includes several original items belonging to Stevenson and his family. The path to Stevenson's grave at the top of Mt Vaea commences from the museum.

text: A bronze relief memorial to Stevenson, designed by the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904, is mounted in the Moray Aisle of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.[81] Saint-Gaudens' scaled-down version of this relief is in the collection of the Montclair Art Museum.[82] Another small version depicting Stevenson with a cigarette in his hand rather than the pen he holds in the St. Giles memorial is displayed in the Nichols House Museum in Beacon Hill, Boston.[83]

text: Another memorial in Edinburgh stands in West Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle; it is a simple upright stone inscribed with "RLS – A Man of Letters 1850–1894" by sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay in 1987.[84] In 2013, a statue of Stevenson as a child with his dog was unveiled by the author Ian Rankin outside Colinton Parish Church.[85] The sculptor of the statue was Alan Herriot, and the money to erect it was raised by the Colinton Community Conservation Trust.[85]

text: A plaque above the door of a house in Castleton of Braemar states "Here R.L. Stevenson spent the Summer of 1881 and wrote Treasure Island, his first great work".

text: A garden was designed by the Bournemouth Corporation in 1957 as a memorial to Stevenson, on the site of his Westbourne house, "Skerryvore", which he occupied from 1885 to 1887. A statue of the Skerryvore lighthouse is present on the site.

text: In 1966, the Canadian actor Lloyd Bochner played Stevenson in the episode "Jolly Roger and Wells Fargo" of the syndicated American television series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor and directed by Denver Pyle.[86]

text: In 1994, to mark the 100th anniversary of Stevenson's death, the Royal Bank of Scotland issued a series of commemorative £1 notes which featured a quill pen and Stevenson's signature on the obverse, and Stevenson's face on the reverse side. Alongside Stevenson's portrait are scenes from some of his books and his house in Western Samoa.[87] Two million notes were issued, each with a serial number beginning "RLS". The first note to be printed was sent to Samoa in time for their centenary celebrations on 3 December 1994.[88]

text: At least six US elementary schools are named after Stevenson, in the Upper West Side of New York City,[89] in Fridley, Minnesota,[90] in Burbank, California,[91] in Grandview Heights, Ohio (suburb of Columbus), in San Francisco, California,[92] and in Merritt Island, Florida.[93] There is an R. L. Stevenson middle school in Honolulu, Hawaii and in Saint Helena, California. Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, was established in 1952 and still exists as a college preparatory boarding school. Robert Louis Stevenson State Park near Calistoga, California, contains the location where he and Fanny spent their honeymoon in 1880.[94]

text: A street in Honolulu's Waikiki District, where Stevenson lived while in the Hawaiian Islands, was named after his Samoan moniker: Tusitala.

text: In 2011, Robert Louis Stevenson's open letter defending Father Damien from Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde influenced the founding of the Saint Damien Advocates in Hawaii.[95]

text: The Chemin du Stevenson (GR 70) is a popular long-distance footpath in France that approximately follows Stevenson's route as described in Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. There are numerous monuments and businesses named after him along the route, including a fountain in the town of Saint-Jean-du-Gard where Stevenson sold his donkey Modestine and took a stagecoach to Alès.[96]

text: The Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial is an outdoor memorial in Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, California.

text: A memorial by Gutzon Borglum was unveiled, in 1915, at Baker Cottage, Saranac Lake, New York.

text: Gallery[edit]

text:
Photographic portrait, c. 1887

Stevenson paces in his dining room in an 1885 portrait by John Singer Sargent. His wife Fanny, seated in an Indian dress, is visible in the lower right corner.

Portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1887

Portrait by William Blake Richmond, 1886

Portrait by Girolamo Nerli, 1892

by Henry Walter Barnett, 1893

text: Bibliography[edit]

text: Novels[edit]

text:
The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth (1877) Unfinished and unpublished.[97] An annotated edition of the original manuscript, edited and introduced by Roger G. Swearingen, was published as The Hair Trunk or The Ideal Commonwealth: An Extravaganza in August 2014.
Treasure Island (1883) His first major success, a tale of piracy, buried treasure, and adventure, has been filmed frequently. In an 1881 letter to W. E. Henley, he provided the earliest known title, "The Sea Cook, or Treasure Island: a Story for Boys".
Prince Otto (1885) Stevenson's third full-length narrative, an action romance set in the imaginary Germanic state of Grünewald.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), a novella about a dual personality much depicted in plays and films, also influential in the growth of understanding of the subconscious mind through its treatment of a kind and intelligent physician who turns into a psychopathic monster after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality.
Kidnapped (1886) is a historical novel that tells of the boy David Balfour's pursuit of his inheritance and his alliance with Alan Breck Stewart in the intrigues of Jacobite troubles in Scotland.
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1888) An historical adventure novel and romance set during the Wars of the Roses.
The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale (1889), a masterful tale of revenge, set in Scotland, America, and India.
The Wrong Box (1889); co-written with Lloyd Osbourne. A comic novel of a tontine, also filmed (1966).
The Wrecker (1892); co-written with Lloyd Osbourne.
Catriona (1893), also known as David Balfour, is a sequel to Kidnapped, telling of Balfour's further adventures.
The Ebb-Tide (1894); co-written with Lloyd Osbourne.
Weir of Hermiston (1896). Unfinished at the time of Stevenson's death, considered to have promised great artistic growth.
St Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897). Unfinished at the time of Stevenson's death, the novel was completed by Arthur Quiller-Couch.

text: Short story collections[edit]

text:
New Arabian Nights (1882)
More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885); co-written with Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887); contains 6 stories.
Island Nights' Entertainments (also known as South Sea Tales) (1893) contains three longer stories.
Fables (1896) contains 20 stories: The persons of the tale, The sinking ship, The two matches, The sick man and the fireman, The devil and the innkeeper, The penitent, The yellow paint, The house of Eld, The four reformers, The man and his friend, The reader, The citizen and the traveller, The distinguished stranger, The carthorse and the saddlehorse, The tadpole and the frog, something in it, Faith, half faith and no faith at all, The touchstone, The poor thing, The song of the morrow.
Tales and Fantasies, 1905, contains The Story of a Lie, The Body Snatcher, The Misadventures of John Nicholson.

text: Short stories[edit]

text: List of short stories sorted chronologically. Note: does not include collaborations with Fanny found in More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter.

text:
Title
Date
Collection
Notes

"When the Devil was Well"
1875
1921, Boston Bibliophile Society

"An Old Song"
1875
Uncollected
Stevenson's first Published Fiction, in London, 1877. Anonymous. Republished in 1982 by R. Swearingen.

"Edifying Letters of the Rutherford Family"
1877
Unfinished, uncollected.
Not truly a short-story. First published in 1982 by R. Swearingen.

"Will O' the Mill"
1877
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1878

"A Lodging for the Night"
1877
New Arabian Nights (1882)
First published in Temple Bar in 1877

"The Sire De Malétroits Door"
1877
New Arabian Nights, 1882
First published in Temple Bar in 1878

"Later-day Arabian Nights"
1878
New Arabian Nights, 1882
First published in London in 1878. Seven interconnected stories in two cycles: The Suicide Club (3 stories) and The Rajah's Diamond (4 stories).

"Providence and the Guitar"
1878
New Arabian Nights, 1882
First published in London in 1878

"The Story of a Lie"
1879
The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol 3, 1895
First published in New Quarterly Magazine in 1879.

"The Pavilion on the Links"
1880
With a few suppressions in New Arabian Nights, 1882
First Published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1880. Told in 9 mini-chapters. Conan Doyle in 1890 called it the first English short story.

"Thrawn Janet"
1881
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1881

"The Body Snatcher"
1881
Edinburgh Edition, 1895
First published in the Christmas 1884 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette.

"The Merry Men"
1882
With changes in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1882.

"The Treasure of Franchard"
1883
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in Longman's Magazine, 1883

"Markheim"
1884
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in the Broken Shaft. Unwin's Annual., 1885

"Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"
1885
1886
Variously referred to as a short story or novella, or more rarely, a short novel.[98]

"Olalla"
1885
The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887
First published in the Court and Society Review, 1885

"The Misadventures of John Nicholson: A Christmas Story"
1885–87
Edinburgh Edition, 1897
First published in Yule Tide, 1887

"The Bottle Imp"
1891
Island Nights' Entertainments (1893)
First published in Black and White, 1891

"The Beach of Falesá"
1892
Island Nights' Entertainments (1893)
First published in The Illustrated London News in 1892

"The Isle of Voices"
1892
Island Nights' Entertainments (1893)
First published in National Observer, 1883

"The Waif Woman"
1892
1914
First published in the Scribner's Magazine, 1914

text: Other works[edit]

text:
" "Béranger, Pierre Jean de". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.  — first published in the 9th edition (1875–1889).
Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers (1881), contains the essays Virginibus Puerisque i (1876); Virginibus Puerisque ii (1881); Virginibus Puerisque iii: On Falling in Love (1877); Virginibus Puerisque iv: The Truth of Intercourse (1879); Crabbed Age and Youth (1878); An Apology for Idlers (1877); Ordered South (1874); Aes Triplex (1878); El Dorado (1878); The English Admirals (1878); Some Portraits by Raeburn (previously unpublished); Child's Play (1878); Walking Tours (1876); Pan's Pipes (1878); A Plea for Gas Lamps (1878).
Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) containing Preface, by Way of Criticism (not previously published); Victor Hugo's Romances (1874); Some Aspects of Robert Burns (1879); The Gospel According to Walt Whitman (1878); Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions (1880); Yoshida-Torajiro (1880); François Villon, Student, Poet, Housebreaker (1877); Charles of Orleans (1876); Samuel Pepys (1881); John Knox and his Relations to Women (1875).
Memories and Portraits (1887), a collection of essays.
On the Choice of a Profession (1887)
Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin (1888)
Father Damien: an Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu (1890)
Vailima Letters (1895)
The New Lighthouse on the Dhu Heartach Rock, Argyllshire (1995). Based on an 1872 manuscript edited by R. G. Swearingen. California. Silverado Museum.
Sophia Scarlet (2008). Based on 1892 manuscript edited by Robert Hoskins. AUT Media (AUT University).

text: Poetry[edit]

text:
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), written for children but also popular with their parents. Includes such favourites as "My Shadow" and "The Lamplighter". Often thought to represent a positive reflection of the author's sickly childhood.
Underwoods (1887), a collection of poetry written in both English and Scots.
Ballads (1891), included Ticonderoga: A Legend of the West Highlands (1887). Based on a famous Scottish ghost story.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
Poems Hitherto Unpublished, 3 vol. 1916, 1916, 1921, Boston Bibliophile Society, republished in New Poems

text: Travel writing[edit]

text:
An Inland Voyage (1878), travels with a friend in a Rob Roy canoe from Antwerp (Belgium) to Pontoise, just north of Paris.
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes (1878) - a paean to his birthplace, it provides Stevenson's personal introduction to each part of the city and some history behind the various sections of the city and its most famous buildings.
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), two weeks' solo ramble (with Modestine as his beast of burden) in the mountains of Cévennes (south-central France), one of the first books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities. It tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags.
The Silverado Squatters (1883). An unconventional honeymoon trip to an abandoned mining camp in Napa Valley with his new wife Fanny and her son Lloyd. He presciently identifies the California wine industry as one to be reckoned with.
Across the Plains (written in 1879–80, published in 1892). Second leg of his journey, by train from New York to California (then picks up with The Silverado Squatters). Also includes other travel essays.
The Amateur Emigrant (written 1879–80, published 1895). An account of the first leg of his journey to California, by ship from Europe to New York. Andrew Noble (From the Clyde to California: Robert Louis Stevenson's Emigrant Journey, 1985) considers it to be his finest work.
The Old and New Pacific Capitals (1882). An account of his stay in Monterey, California in August to December 1879. Never published separately. See, for example, James D. Hart, ed., From Scotland to Silverado, 1966.
Essays of Travel (London: Chatto & Windus, 1905)

text: Island literature[edit]

text: Although not well known, his island fiction and non-fiction is among the most valuable and collected of the 19th century body of work that addresses the Pacific area.

text:
In the South Seas (1896). A collection of Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific.
A Footnote to History, Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892).


document_title: Saw (franchise)

question_text: when did the last saw movie come out

question_tokens: when did the last saw movie come out

root

text: Saw (franchise)

text: Overview[edit]

text:
Saw (film series)

Directed by
James Wan (1)
Darren Lynn Bousman (2, 3, 4)
David Hackl (5)
Kevin Greutert (6, 7)
The Spierig Brothers (8)

Produced by
Gregg Hoffman
Mark Burg
Oren Koules

Screenplay by
Darren Lynn Bousman (2)
Marcus Dunstan (4, 5, 6, 7)
Peter Goldfinger (8)
Patrick Melton (4, 5, 6, 7)
Josh Stolberg (8)
Leigh Whannell (1, 2, 3)

Story by
Marcus Dunstan (4)
Thomas Fenton (4)
Patrick Melton (4)
James Wan (1, 2, 3)
Leigh Whannell (1, 2, 3)

Based on
Saw by
James Wan
Leigh Whannell

Starring
Tobin Bell

Music by
Charlie Clouser

Cinematography
David A. Armstrong (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Brian Gedge (7)
Ben Nott (8)

Edited by
Kevin Greutert (1, 2, 3, 4,5, 8)
Brett Sullivan (4)
Andrew Coutts (6, 7)

Production
company

Twisted Pictures

Distributed by
Lionsgate Films

Release date

Saw:
October 29, 2004
Saw II:
October 28, 2005
Saw III:
October 27, 2006
Saw IV:
October 26, 2007
Saw V:
October 24, 2008
Saw VI:
October 23, 2009
Saw 3D:
October 29, 2010
Jigsaw:
October 27, 2017

Running time

Total (8 films):
760 minutes

Country
United States

Language
English

Budget
Total (8 films):
$77.7 million

Box office
Total (7 films):
$975.4 million

tag: table

text: Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the roots of the series, presenting John Kramer as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill Tuck, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Jill lost her unborn baby, Gideon, due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene. Saw VI later showed that another drug addict, Amanda Young, also had an unintentional role in the death of Gideon. John grieved over the loss of his child, and distanced himself from his friends and his wife.

tag: p

text: John and Jill eventually drifted apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter over his squandered life and the loss of his unborn son, John began observing the lives of others and became even more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the gift of life that he had just been denied. John went to a man named William Easton to get money for a cancer treatment, but was denied. Flashbacks from Saw II show that, after surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", and nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. Then, in Saw IV flashbacks, he designed the first trap and test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" or "games" as a form of "instant rehabilitation" that would change the world, "one person at a time". John was soon given the name "The Jigsaw Killer" (or "Jigsaw"), because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who did not escape his traps. John stated that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something—what he called the "survival instinct".

text: Few of Jigsaw's victims are able to survive his brutal mechanical traps, which are often ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical and psychological torture to escape.

text: In Saw V, police lieutenant Mark Hoffman's ties with John are revealed in a series of flashbacks during the film. Hoffman's sister is murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter. Seth is arrested; however, a technicality allowed him to be released, and Hoffman, feeling Seth had not served the full capacity of his sentence, kills him in an inescapable trap designed to look like one of Jigsaw's, laying the blame on him. Jigsaw then kidnaps Hoffman and blackmails him into becoming his apprentice in his "rehabilitation" methods, though eventually Hoffman would become a willing apprentice, helping set up John's tests from almost the beginning, starting with Paul's trap.

text: The first surviving victim, Amanda Young, views Jigsaw as a hero who ultimately changed her life for the better. Amanda, upon Jigsaw's request, agrees to become his protégée. After Amanda survives, John shows Jill her rehabilitation, and Jill then becomes knowledgeable of John's traps and becomes somewhat of an accomplice as well.

text: In Saw, Jigsaw has chained the man who diagnosed his cancer, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Stanheight, a photographer who has been tailing the doctor due to belief he is cheating on his wife. Lawrence has instructions to kill Adam by six o'clock, or else his wife and daughter will be killed. Flashbacks show detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who suspect Lawrence of being Jigsaw, following a trail of clues from other Jigsaw traps. Sing's death from a shotgun trap after saving a victim named Jeff causes Tapp to obsess over catching Jigsaw. Later on, he chases Zep Hindle, who monitors Adam and Lawrence's tests, and gets shot in the chest. Eventually, Lawrence saws his own foot off in order to escape, leaving Adam in the bathroom while Lawrence goes to try to save his family and get help for Adam. It is later seen in Saw 3D that Lawrence found a steaming hot pipe and cauterized his wound, stopping the bleeding and ultimately surviving the trap. John catches up with Lawrence and makes him his next apprentice, a fact which he hides from his other accomplices. Flashbacks from Saw III show that Amanda kidnapped Adam and later returned to suffocate him as an act of "mercy killing".

text: Saw II begins with the police tracking a severely weakened Jigsaw to his lair. However, another test is in place, as he and Amanda have kidnapped the son of Detective Eric Matthews and trapped him and a group of seven convicts, previously framed by Eric, in a house that is slowly being filled with sarin gas, with Amanda Young among them. He will trade Daniel Matthews' life for Eric's time, conversing with him until the game is concluded. Eric loses his patience and assaults Jigsaw, forcing him to take him to the house, only to discover that the video feed from inside the house had been pre-recorded, the events actually taking place much earlier; Eric's son was locked in a safe in Jigsaw's warehouse, being kept alive with an oxygen tank. Eric is knocked unconscious by a masked figure and wakes up imprisoned in the bathroom from Saw, which is part of the foundation of the house. Amanda reveals herself to Eric as Jigsaw's protégée before leaving him to die. In a flashback from Saw III, Eric manages to escape the bathroom by breaking his foot. He confronts and beats Amanda, demanding to know where his son is. Amanda fights him off and leaves him for dead. A flashback from Saw IV shows Hoffman later dragging Eric to a prison cell, keeping him alive for a future game.

text: The events of Saw III and Saw IV occur concurrently. Saw III begins with Jigsaw, weakened and near death, confined to a makeshift hospital bed. Amanda has taken over his work, designing traps of her own; however, these traps are inescapable, as Amanda is convinced that Jigsaw's traps have no effect and that people don't change. A kidnapped doctor is forced to keep Jigsaw alive while another test is performed on Jeff, a man obsessed with vengeance against the drunk driver who killed his son. Jigsaw, unwilling to allow a murderer to continue his legacy, designs a test for Amanda as well; she ultimately fails, and it results in the deaths of both Jigsaw and Amanda. Saw IV, meanwhile, revolves around tests meant for Officer Daniel Rigg, which are overseen by Hoffman. Rigg fails his test, resulting in the death of Eric Matthews. Rigg is left to bleed to death by Hoffman, who later discovers the bodies of Jigsaw and Amanda. When an autopsy is performed on Jigsaw, a cassette tape coated in wax is found in his stomach; the tape informs Hoffman that he is wrong to think that it is all over just because Jigsaw is dead, and he should not expect to go untested.

text: The events of Saw V show one of Hoffman's first solo tests, five people connected together by different roles in a disastrous fire that killed several others are put into four interconnected tests of teamwork, killing off one person in each trap. The two remaining test subjects realize at the final trap that each previous trap was meant to be completed by each of the five people doing a small part, rather than killing one person per trap. With this knowledge, the two work together and barely manage to escape. They are found alive by Special Agent Erikson.[8] Meanwhile, Hoffman has set up FBI Agent Peter Strahm to appear to be Jigsaw's accomplice, while Strahm pursues Hoffman and is eventually killed due to his inability to follow Hoffman's rules, leaving Hoffman free to continue Jigsaw's "work".

text: Saw VI begins with Hoffman setting up a game as per John's instructions left in a box for Jill during Saw V. This game centers on insurance executive named William Easton who oversees a team responsible for rejecting two-thirds of all insurance claims. As William progresses through four tests, he saves as many people as he can and learns the error of his choice to reject so many policies, which inherently "kill" the rejected. His last test is revealed to be a test of forgiveness by the family of Harold Abbott, a man to whom William rejected a policy in the past, whose son ultimately chooses to kill William using hydrofluoric acid. Meanwhile, Agent Erickson and the-previously-thought-to-be-dead agent Lindsey Perez search for Agent Strahm with the assistance of Hoffman. Upon finding irregularities in previous murder scenes, Perez and Erickson discover Hoffman's identity, but are killed by him before they can go public with his involvement. Hoffman travels back to the site of William's tests in which Jill attacks him to obey John's final request. She leaves Hoffman in a new Reverse Beartrap left behind by John, though does not leave a key for him to free himself. He is able to manipulate the trap and escapes wounded.

text: Saw 3D picks up with Jill and Hoffman battling for control of Jigsaw's legacy. As Jill enters protective custody and makes Hoffman's true identity public, Hoffman sets up a new game involving skinheads to find a way to Jill. Meanwhile, Bobby Dagen, a fraud who has written a book about escaping a Jigsaw trap he never experienced, is captured and forced to confront people who knew that he lied about being in a trap. Three of Dagen's friends die and his test concludes with him being forced to reenact the trap that he claimed to have survived before. He fails, which results in the death of his wife. Meanwhile, Hoffman has posed as a corpse and killed several officers to infiltrate the police station. He finds and kills Jill using the Reverse Beartrap. Hoffman attempts to leave town but is captured by Lawrence Gordon and his accomplices, then placed in the bathroom from the first film. Revealing Jigsaw-aided Lawrence after his game and, in return, Lawrence helped with subsequent traps. Hoffman is then left shackled in the bathroom to die.

text: Jigsaw begins with a new game presumably being conducted ten years after the events of John Kramer's death in Saw III. Five people are forced to undergo a series of tests in an abandoned barn, lead by John. In the first test, one of the subjects is seemingly killed by buzzsaws after remaining unconscious during instruction. Most of the remaining subjects are killed over the course of the game, until only two, Anna and the heavily wounded Ryan, are left. The two of them are drugged and wake up chained on opposite sides of a room. John is revealed to be in the room with them, and he provides them with a shotgun, explaining it is the "key to their freedom", before leaving them to escape. Anna attempts to kill Ryan with the shotgun, but the weapon was rigged to backfire, killing her and leaving Ryan to die. Meanwhile, police forces lead by Detective Halloran and aided by medical forensic scientists Logan Nelson and Eleanor Bonneville attempt to discover the location and participants in the game, while also struggling to understand how the deceased John could be behind it all. Logan and Eleanor find the location of the game at an abandoned barn owned by Jill Tuck, with Halloran pursuing them, believing they are behind the most recent games. Eleanor is shown escaping, and Logan and Halloran are placed in a room with collars lined with laser cutters around their neck. They are told by John that they must confess their sins to survive. Logan is presumably killed after admitting his error delayed Johns diagnosis. Halloran then confesses he let various guilty convicts walk free, deactivating his collar. However, Logan rises from the ground, revealing his collar was harmless. He explains that the game in the barn was the very first game that took place ten years earlier, and that the bodies found by the team were criminals that Halloran let walk free, who Logan placed into an identical game of his own. He reveals he was the participant in the first game who was presumably killed by the buzzsaws, but that John did not believe Logan should die simply because his 'crime' was merely an accident, and rescued him as a result. John took Logan under his wing, and Logan aided John in all the various traps throughout the series, making him John's very first apprentice. Logan reactivates Halloran's collar, slicing his head open, before slamming the door shut.

text: Production elements[edit]

text: Billy[edit]

text: Billy is a puppet resembling a ventriloquist's dummy, sometimes seen riding a tricycle, that has appeared throughout the films and has become a type of mascot for the series. It is used by the Jigsaw Killer to communicate with his victims by delivering televised messages or occasionally in person to describe details of the sadistic traps and the means by which the victims could survive. Viewers have sometimes incorrectly identified the puppet itself as Jigsaw, because of its presence and connection to the killer.

text: Age and use of the puppet over the course of the films necessitated its reconstruction. According to Wan, the original puppet's face for Saw involved clay, papier-mâché, and black ping-pong balls with the irises painted in for the eyes, but in later films more sophisticated construction included waterjet-cut foam for the body and remote-controlled animatronics.[9]

text: The endurance and popularity of the franchise has resulted in the production of Billy merchandise, as well as references in other media and its use in promotions for the films.

text: "Hello Zepp"[edit]

text: "Hello Zepp" is a piece of instrumental music that was originally composed by Charlie Clouser for the first film in the series. In Saw, the implied villain, Zep Hindle, is revealed to actually be a victim of the Jigsaw Killer. (The character's name in the script is spelled "Zep", whereas the music titles are spelled "Zepp".)[10][11] As the series continued, the piece was reused in every film as a leitmotif, often being renamed and remixed to accommodate the changing situations and characters. The music was used in every Saw ending, usually during the revealing of plot revelations and twists which Saw films often use and it serves as the main theme tune for the whole films.

text: Traps[edit]

text: An important component of each film is the variety of (usually mechanical in form) traps Jigsaw and his apprentices use on their captives to communicate his message.

text: According to David Hackl, all of the traps are real objects, and not CGI. They were designed to look horrific but ultimately be safe for the actors in them. Writer Marcus Dunstan said: "It's built to function there on the day", and added: "It works. So if there's a scalping chair—there really was a chair with working gears to grind and pull your scalp back." The most potentially dangerous item was a "water box" used in Saw V, in which one of the actors (Scott Patterson, as Peter Strahm) had to keep his head submerged as long as possible. Another element of the traps is that Hackl desired a specific look of rust and menace, but he also wanted them to have a type of beauty about them.[12]

text: Cast and characters[edit]

text: A dark grey cell indicates the character was not in the film.

tag: ul

text:
Character
Film

Saw
Saw II
Saw III
Saw IV
Saw V
Saw VI
Saw 3D
Jigsaw

2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2017

John Kramer / Jigsaw
Tobin Bell

Amanda Young
Shawnee Smith

Mark Hoffman

Costas Mandylor

Jill Tuck

Betsy Russell
Mentioned Only

Lawrence Gordon
Cary Elwes
Voice only
Uncredited
Mentioned only
Cary Elwes

Adam Stanheight
Leigh Whannell
Corpse only (prop)
Leigh Whannell

Mentioned only

Corpse only (prop)

Zep Hindle
Michael Emerson
Corpse only (prop)

Mentioned only

Corpse only (prop)

David Tapp
Danny Glover

Danny Glover

Steven Sing
Ken Leung

Ken Leung

Allison Kerry
Dina Meyer

Eric Matthews

Donnie Wahlberg

Daniel Rigg

Lyriq Bent

Daniel Matthews

Erik Knudsen
Mentioned only

Uncredited

Xavier Chavez

Franky G

Uncredited

Corpse only (prop)

Jeff Denlon

Angus Macfadyen

Lynn Denlon

Bahar Soomekh

Bahar Soomekh

Peter Strahm

Scott Patterson
Mentioned Only

Lindsey Perez

Athena Karkanis
Mentioned Only
Athena Karkanis

Art Blank

Justin Louis

Dan Erickson

Mark Rolston

Mallick

Greg Bryk

Greg Bryk

Brit

Julie Benz

Pamela Jenkins

Samantha Lemole

William Easton

Peter Outerbridge

Bobby Dagen

Sean Patrick Flanery

Matt Gibson

Chad Donella

Logan Nelson

Matt Passmore

Detective Halloran

Callum Keith Rennie

Eleanor Bonneville

Hannah Emily Anderson

text: Crew[edit]

text:
Crew
Film

Saw
Saw II
Saw III
Saw IV
Saw V
Saw VI
Saw 3D
Jigsaw

Director(s)
James Wan
Darren Lynn Bousman
David Hackl
Kevin Greutert
The Spierig Brothers

Writer(s)
Story by
James Wan
Leigh Whannell
Screenplay by
Leigh Whannell
Leigh Whannell
Darren Lynn Bousman
Story by
James Wan
Leigh Whannell
Screenplay by
Leigh Whannell
Story by
Thomas Fenton
Patrick Melton
Marcus Dunstan
Screenplay by
Patrick Melton
Marcus Dunstan
Patrick Melton
Marcus Dunstan
Josh Stolberg
Pete Goldfinger

Producer(s)
Mark Burg
Oren Koules
Gregg Hoffman

Executive Producer
Daniel Jason Heffner

Cinematographer
David A. Armstrong
Brian Gedge
Ben Nott

Editor(s)
Kevin Greutert
Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan
Kevin Greutert
Andrew Coutts
Kevin Greutert

Production designer
Julie Berghoff
David Hackl
Anthony A. Ianni
Anthony Cowley

Composer
Charlie Clouser

MPAA rating
R

CHVRS rating
18A

ACB rating
MA15+
MA15+/R18+ (DVD)
MA15+
R18+
MA15+

BBFC rating
18

Running time
102 minutes
92 minutes
108 minutes
92 minutes
92 minutes
90 minutes
90 minutes
92 minutes

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: Saw grossed $18.2 million its opening weekend and had become Lionsgate's second-best opening, after Fahrenheit 9/11's $23.9 million (2004).[15] Saw went on to gross $103 million worldwide,[16] and is the second-lowest-grossing film in the series after Saw VI.[17] At the time, it became the most profitable horror film after Scream (1996). It is the seventh-highest-grossing Halloween opening weekend.[18] Saw II opened at number one with $31.7 million,[19] and set a Lionsgate Halloween opening weekend record and is also the third-highest-grossing Halloween opener. It became at the time, the widest release in Lionsgate history and one of the best opening weekends for a horror sequel. It is Lionsgate's fourth-highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada.[20] Saw III placed first by grossing $33.6 million its opening weekend, making it the biggest Halloween debut ever[18] and at the time, Lionsgate's highest-opening weekend.[21] It is the highest-grossing film in the series worldwide.[17][22] It has the highest-grossing weekend in the series and also Lionsgate's fifth-highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada.[17][20]

text: Saw IV premiered at number one with $32.1 million making it the second-best Halloween weekend opener.[18][23] In Saw V's opening weekend it placed second, being beat by High School Musical 3: Senior Year, and made $30.1 million.[24] It is Lionsgate's tenth-highest-grossing film.[20] Saw VI opened in second place behind Paranormal Activity to $14.1 million,[25] which is the lowest of all the Saw films worldwide. It is also the lowest-grossing film in the series.[17] Saw 3D placed first grossing $22.5 million its opening weekend, with 92% of tickets coming from more than 2,100 3D-equipped locations.[26][27] It had the fifth-best opening weekend in the Saw series.[28] It is the most successful film in the franchise since Saw IV.[29]

text: The Saw series, when compared to the other high-grossing American horror franchises—A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Friday the 13th, Halloween, the Hannibal Lecter series, Hellraiser, Psycho, Scream, The Exorcist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—with figures adjusted for 2011 inflation,[30] is the fifth-highest-grossing horror franchise in the United States and Canada at $457.4 million.[31] This list is topped by Friday the 13th at $687.1 million,[32] followed by the Nightmare on Elm Street series with $592.8 million,[33] with the Hannibal Lecter film series closely behind with $588.7 million.[34] Then comes Halloween with $557.5 million,[35] the Scream series with $442.9 million and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with $304.6 million,[36] and lastly comes the Child's Play film series with approximately $203 million.[37]

text: Unadjusted for inflation[edit]

text:
Film
Release date
Revenue
Budget
References

United States
Canada
Other markets
Worldwide

Saw
October 29, 2004 (2004-10-29)
$55,185,045
$47,911,300
$103,096,345
$1–1.2 million
[16][38]

Saw II
October 28, 2005 (2005-10-28)
$87,039,965
$60,708,540
$147,748,505
$4 million
[39]

Saw III
October 27, 2006 (2006-10-27)
$80,238,724
$84,635,551
$164,874,275
$10 million
[22]

Saw IV
October 26, 2007 (2007-10-26)
$63,300,095
$76,052,538
$139,352,633
$10 million
[40][41]

Saw V
October 24, 2008 (2008-10-24)
$56,746,769
$57,117,290
$113,864,059
$10.8 million
[42]

Saw VI
October 23, 2009 (2009-10-23)
$27,693,292
$40,540,337
$68,233,629
$11 million
[43]

Saw 3D
October 29, 2010 (2010-10-29)
$45,710,178
$90,440,256
$136,150,434
$20 million
[44]

Jigsaw
October 27, 2017 (2017-10-27)
$38,052,832
$64,885,390
$102,938,222
$10 million
[45]

Total
$453,966,900
$522,291,202
$976,240,102
$77 million

text: Critical reaction[edit]

text: On IGN's list of the top twenty-five movie franchises of all time, the Saw series ranked as 25th.[46]

text:
Film
Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic
CinemaScore[47]

Saw
49% (183 reviews)[48]
46 (32 reviews)[49]
C+

Saw II
37% (119 reviews)[50]
40 (28 reviews)[51]
B+

Saw III
28% (90 reviews)[52]
48 (16 reviews)[53]
B

Saw IV
17% (78 reviews)[54]
36 (16 reviews)[55]
B

Saw V
13% (75 reviews)[56]
20 (12 reviews)[57]
C

Saw VI
39% (72 reviews)[58]
30 (12 reviews)[59]
B

Saw 3D
9% (76 reviews)[60]
24 (17 reviews)[61]
B–

Jigsaw
34% (66 reviews)[62]
39 (18 reviews)[63]
B

Average
28%
37
B

text: Merchandise and attractions[edit]

text: Films[edit]

text:
Saw, a 2003 short film that served as a promotional tool in pitching the film's potential to Lions Gate Entertainment, included on the second disc of the uncut DVD release of Saw, released by itself, and on the Saw Trilogy DVD containing Saw Uncut Edition, Saw II Special Edition, and Saw III Director's Cut, packaged with a limited-edition 3-D puppet head box version of Billy the Puppet.
Saw, released on October 29, 2004
Saw II, released on October 28, 2005
Saw III, released on October 27, 2006
Saw IV, released on October 26, 2007
Saw V, released on October 24, 2008
Saw VI, released on October 23, 2009
Saw 3D, released on October 29, 2010
Jigsaw, released on October 27, 2017

text: Video games[edit]

text: Japanese video game company Konami currently owns the rights to the Saw interactive video game property. Konami stated in mid-2009 that they wanted to make Saw a series of video games to supplement the films. They also wish to make Saw their next big survival horror franchise next to their other property, Silent Hill. They stated that because Saw focuses on visual intensity and Silent Hill focuses on psychological terror, both could exist in the video game industry without directly competing against each other.[64]

text: The first game in the series, Saw, set between first and second film in the series, was initially released on October 6, 2009.[65][66][67] with a sequel Saw II: Flesh & Blood, released on October 19, 2010, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, ten days before the release of the seventh film, Saw 3D.[68]

text: David Tapp and Amanda Young were released as part of the downloadable Saw Chapter for the video game Dead by Daylight.[69]

text: Comic[edit]

text: Saw: Rebirth, a comic book prequel to the original film released to promote Saw II. Its canonicity was later contradicted by events in Saw IV. It is, however, the first canonical appearance of Jigsaw's wife, Jill, who was later introduced into the film series in Saw III, and established still-canonical elements of Jigsaw's backstory (an engineer who is dying from brain cancer.)

text: Attractions[edit]

text:
"Saw: The Ride" is a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter roller coaster themed around the franchise, which opened on March 13, 2009, at Thorpe Park in the United Kingdom. It features an enclosed dark ride section with special effects, before cars travel outside and are pulled up a 100-foot vertical lift hill into a steep 100-degree drop.
Thorpe Park opened a temporary Saw attraction called "Saw — Movie Bites" for their 2009 Fright Nights event.
It was announced in October 2009 that Thorpe Park would also be adding a permanent, year-round live action horror maze themed around the Saw movies. It opened at the start of the 2010 season, and features six scenes representing one iconic trap from each movie to date.[70]
"Saw: Game Over" was a 2009 maze made by Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights, based on characters, traps and scenes from the films.[71] At the Universal Studios Hollywood rendition of Horror Nights it was titled Saw: Game Over, while at the Universal Studios Florida rendition, it was simply titled Saw.
"Saw", a themed haunted house, operated during the month of October at Fright Dome, Circus Circus Las Vegas. It featured interactive, handcrafted replicas of the "games" set by Jigsaw. It was introduced in 2009 and partnered with Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures.
In 2010, "Halloween Fright Nights" at Warner Bros. Movie World featured a maze created by Sudden Impact Entertainment, featuring characters, traps and scenes from the films. The maze was simply titled "Saw Maze".
"Saw Haunted Attraction" was a maze at the Brea Plaza Shopping Center in 2008 created by Sinister Pointe Haunted Attractions.
"SAWMANIA" was a fan event in New York. Eventgoers were able to meet actors and directors, and view props used in the films.

text: Future[edit]

text: Since Jigsaw's release and after it became a box office success, there have been reports about the possibility of a new entry. The horror news site, Bloody Disgusting reported on January 16, 2018 that "Twisted Pictures is planning a ninth SAW" noting that "it’s just a “conversation” at the moment, and Jigsaw directors Michael and Peter Spierig will not be returning to their director’s chairs."[72]

text: Reflecting on this report, Movie Web took into consideration the franchise's financial success thus far when considering the probability of a ninth film being made. It noted: "Saw, at this point, thanks to Jigsaw, is just shy of becoming a billion-dollar franchise. That's not something many horror franchises can claim, so Saw 9 seems like the kind of thing that is probably going to become closer to a reality as time goes on."[73]

text: On January 26, 2018, Tobin Bell expressed an interest in reprising his role as Jigsaw in a ninth film. He stated: "If they were to continue I’m always interested. Actors act. That’s what we do. And I’m always interested in expanding a character and filling him in if there’s more story to be told. And when the writing is good and makes people think, and is surprising and intricate and something new. So yes, I’m interested in participating in that." Bell also expressed an interest in a future sequel exploring more into the origins of the Billy doll.[74]

text: During an interview on February 2, 2018 with Screen Rant for Jigsaw’s home video release, co-directors The Spierig Brothers claim the eighth film secretly laid the story foundation for the next sequel. When asked how the film sets up a potential ninth movie, Peter Spierig stated: "There’s a lot of things that go on in Jigsaw that we talked about where they could go in further movies, and so there’s things with the characters and ideas that have the foundations of other things that could potentially come in the next couple of movies. You want to make the movie itself a complete experience for the audience, a satisfying experience in terms of the story, of feeling like there is a conclusion. But at the same time, there are some questions about the characters and their arcs and things like that where we haven’t explained. And we certainly talked about it with the producers and the writer and even the actors – where things potentially could go. It really becomes a question of does the audience want more? Are they keen to see these characters – the characters who survive and even sometimes the characters who don’t survive can end up in another Saw film, based on its history. There’s always room for flashbacks and who knows what."[75]