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Introduction

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson is best known today for a single work: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This story of a scientist who developed a potion splitting his identity so that he could indulge his darker cravings spoke to the Victorian reading public. And though we cannot know what Stevenson's heart was like, the book does address the kind of fundamental divisions that defined his life. On one hand, he was raised to be a lighthouse engineer; on the other, he loved stories and travel. On one hand, his health was terrible; on the other, he loved adventure. Such divisions run throughout Stevenson's short life and through the critical history of his work.

Essential Facts

1. Stevenson’s mother kept him inside through the damp Scottish winters because of his tuberculosis. Stevenson’s nurse read to him from the Bible and the history of Scotland while he watched other boys playing in the streets of Edinburgh and made up stories about them.
2. His father had planned for Stevenson to become a lighthouse engineer like himself and so sent him to Edinburgh Academy, where he enjoyed reading books that had nothing at all do with engineering, such as The Arabian Nights.
3. Stevenson was good friends with David Kalākaua, King of Hawaii.
4. In 1890, Stevenson bought 400 acres on the Samoan island of Upolu, where he established an estate named Vailima.
5. Stevenson wrote the first draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in three days. After he let his wife read it, he burned the manuscript—and then wrote the whole thing again from scratch!