 Thomas Graham Balfour Courtesy of Capital Collections"he was inexhaustible, he was brilliant, he was romantic, he was fiery, he was tender, he was brave, he was kind"
(Thomas Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol ii [London: Methuen, 1901], p. 185)
Thomas Graham Balfour (1858-1929) was RLS’s cousin and biographer. He was also an educationist. Balfour was born to Thomas Graham Balfour (senior) and Georgina Prentice. Balfour married Rhoda Brooke in 1896 and the couple had two sons.
Balfour lived in Vailima with the Stevenson family during the last two and a half years of RLS’s life.
He is particularly significant because of his excellent biography on RLS, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (1901). While critics see this as a well-written and useful account of RLS’s life, the work has also been criticized. For example, critics argue that Fanny was able to assert too much authorial control over the biography. Indeed, Sidney Colvin originally wished to complete the biography, but disputes with Fanny led him to drop the project.
Further Reading:
Balfour, Thomas Graham, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 vols (London: Methuen, 1901)
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