Robert Louis Stevenson

Through fog and darkness, a bell tolls for lost sailors until “the fleet at last” reaches haven. For Robert Louis Stevenson, the lighthouse beam was more than a stirring image: it shone from his own family’s history.

In Scotland, where ancestry was held in deep regard, the Stevensons built lighthouses on perilous rocks and headlands, turning danger into safe passage for ships. Robert Louis grew up beneath the weight and warmth of that inheritance, among capable, strong-willed relatives whose work and character he admired. His father’s family offered a legacy of engineering; his mother, who hoped he would enter the ministry, laboured to secure his education. Delicate in health yet vivid in imagination, the boy would have to find his own way to honour a name already lit by generations of service. What would he make of the inheritance he cherished?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.