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13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894
Famed Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet, author of the Gothic-tradition classic Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, numerous children's adventure tales (think Treasure Island, for starters), and children's nursery rhymes (A Child's Garden of Verses). Stevenson's short life adds to the mystique and aura of his work, which is an impressive collection of outstanding achievements in various popular literary forms. |
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Robert Louis Stevenson web site
The best RLS site going; check this one out. [Richard Drury, U Bergamo, Italy]
Robert Louis Stevenson
A compact but very informative site re: Stevenson's life, supplemented by a small but excellent selection of images. [National Library of Scotland]
Robert Louis Stevenson
Biographical essay. [Jenni Calder, SLAINTE]
Robert Louis Stevenson Exhibition website
Webversion of a 1994-95 exhibit at the University of South Carolina marking the centenary of Stevenson's death, this site includes biographical info and brief discussions of Stevenson's works as well as lots of contextual information.
Stevenson overview
Includes biographical note, contextual information, and some scholarly discussions of various aspects of Stevenson's works. [Victorian Web]
Biographical note
[Writing Scotland; BBC]
Brief biographical note
Part of the PBS website for the 2000 Masterpiece Theatre production of E. Nesbit's classic The Railway Children.
Biographical note
[Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartleby]
Biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Brief biographical note
[Peter Landry, Biographies]
Biographical note
[The Authors Calendar]
Brief biographical note
[Gothic Labyrinth]
Robert Louis Stevenson: a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial [1905]
by Alexander H. Japp. (380K) [Project Gutenberg]
Brief biographical note
[Edinburghers]
Biographical essay
Includes contextual information and links. [Andreas Teuber, Brandeis]
Brief biographical note [John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
Stevenson House
A commercial operation in Edinburgh, though it sounds like a nice place; there's a good brief biographical note on R. L. S., who grew up here.
Stevenson Hyper-Concordance
Part of the The Victorian Literary Studies Archive, this concordance allows you to search etexts of several Stevenson works, including of course Jekyll and Hyde. [Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya U, Japan]
Bibliography
[FantasticFiction]
Portraits
[National Portrait Gallery, London]
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| -- | brief summary and commentary [Pamela Moore; Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, NYU School of Medicine] |
| -- | from the "truth is as strange as fiction" file: cadavers as economic commodity is still with us, as this AP story from March 2004 illustrates. |
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"The Bottle Imp" [1897]
- at Gaslight (76K)
- as part of Stevenson's collection Island Night's Entertainment, a Project Gutenberg etext (263K) "The Isle of Voices"
- at Red Moon Horror
Fables (1902) An entire site devoted to Stevenson's posthumously published and little-known collection of original fables. [UW-Madison Libraries]
"Markheim" First published in 1885.
"Olalla" First published in the Christmas issue of The Court and Society Review in 1885, this strange tale is of a young military man's mystical love for the mysterious Olalla, the hauntingly beautiful young woman who represents the last of a dying family -- and a good thing too, given her mother's attraction to blood and the stories the local villagers (almost) tell. According to one critic, writing in a review in 1887, "An eerier and more powerful tale than Olalla it would not be easy to discover" (R. H. Hutton, Spectator March 1887).
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stevenson's classic 1886 meditation (Stevenson insisted there be no "The" in the title, but who listens to authors?) on the nature of desire and restraint, or -- as many of my students like to see it -- the struggle between good and evil, or perhaps just the species-old conflict between superego and id (to put it in the terms of Freud, who of course had no influence on Stevenson), and let's not forget, in the tradition of Frankenstein, good old hubris... No matter how you slice it, it's another masterful parable about the values and dangers of science....
- at Bartleby.com (Table of Contents)
- at Project Gutenberg (158K) - at Etext Center, UVa "Seeking Hyde" An essay on the enduring power of Stevenson's masterwork. By Robert Mighall [Penguin Classics]
Study Guide
Pitched to high school students, I'd guess, this nonetheless has useful information on Stevenson and the contexts of his famous novella. [Glencoe Literature Library]
Brief summary and commentary
[Pamela Moore; Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database, NYU School of Medicine]
The Jekyll & Hyde myth lives on in many ways, of course, from recent films (Mary Reilly) to casual references in everyday discourse; now, Jekyll & Hyde hit the bars "Thrawn Janet"
- at Red Moon Horror
"Will o' the Mill"
- at GoogleBooks [efacsimile]
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