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Whose Town? Robert Louis Stevenson

Whose Town? Robert Louis Stevenson
Whose Town? Robert Louis Stevenson
Whose Town? was an educational resource built on the heritage collections of the City of Edinburgh. It was developed by Edinburgh City Libraries in partnership with Edinburgh Museums and Galleries and Edinburgh City Archives. The resource was launched in 2011 and unfortunately is no longer available in its original format, however, we have created exhibitions here on Capital Collections to provide schools with access to even more material and to allow a wider audience access to the fascinating stories told in Whose Town?

We are also working on recreating the life stories as digital trails on Our Town Stories.

Whose Town? looks at Edinburgh from 1850 - 1959 to discover the city's past through the lives of the people who lived there. We have used people who lived in Victorian times, at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and in the Fifties. There are fourteen lives to discover as well as exhibitions about each of the four eras.

This exhibition focuses on Robert Louis Stevenson's youth in Edinburgh in the 1870s. Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Stevenson became a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. As a young man Stevenson tried and rejected the family tradition of engineering and then qualified as an advocate, but he only ever took one case, instead concentrating on his ambition to become a writer. His early writing was influenced by his fascination with the Old Town of Edinburgh where he frequented the many bars Edinburgh had to offer. It was a pub in Advocate's Close where Robert Louis Stevenson and friends created the LJR League (Liberty, Justice, Reverence). The club's motto was "disregard everything our parents taught us". This exhibition contains images of Stevenson and his family as well as the Old and New Town of Stevenson's youth.

Find out more about life in Victorian Edinburgh and visit the RLS website to learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson.

Whose town? is supported by funding from The Heritage Lottery Fund.