The career of Sir Sidney Colvin appears to be that of a professional art historian and curator who dabbled in literary affairs as something of an amateur hobby. The impression is, however, misleading. Colvin saw his real calling as that of literary biographer and as annalist of great men of letters of his day whom he met and befriended. In this he was right. He is remembered not as Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, nor as keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, but chiefly as the writer of the first academic biography of John Keats and as the faithful chronicler of his close friend Robert Louis Stevenson.

Colvin was born on 18 June 1845 at Norwood in London. He was the third son of Bazett David Colvin, an East Indian merchant who owned The Grove, Little Bealings, Suffolk...