Robert Louis Stevenson

This exhibition highlights the Edinburgh of Stevenson's time, showing the dark narrow streets of the Old Town which were to inspire the gothic tale of Jekyll and Hyde and other locations in the city with Stevenson connections.

Edinburgh in the mid-nineteenth century was a city of contrasts. The classically ordered New Town where the author's family resided was juxtaposed sharply with the shambolic vibrancy of the Old Town. It was here, amidst the tumbledown tenements, dark closes and narrow wynds that Stevenson spent, or perhaps misspent, many happy days as a young man.
Despite his fondness for the city Stevenson did not settle here. The Edinburgh weather had always aggravated his poor physical health, and at least partly as a result of this he gave up permanent residence here in his mid twenties.
Nevertheless Edinburgh stayed with the author, informing much of his artistic output. The dark and forbidding London of Stevenson's 'Jekyll and Hyde' closely resembles the eerie Old Town with which the author was so well acquainted.
The split-personality of the novella's main character, perhaps based on the Edinburgh figure Deacon Brodie, may also reflect the duality of Victorian Edinburgh, a divided city intimately known and loved by Stevenson.
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