This collection makes a strong case for the essentially Scottish origins of Stevenson's best short fiction, derived as it is from Calvinism's feeling for the immanence of evil, and driven by a sense of man's darker, divided self which goes back to Hogg's Justified Sinner. Thus it is that the story of the respectable Dr Jekyll, even in a London setting, has links that stretch back to the narrow wynds of Edinburgh and the bleak moors and shores of the North. In this company stories of possession, doubleness, and terror such as "The Merry Men," "The Body Snatcher," "Markheim,"
"Thrawn Janet," and others, reveal more clearly than ever their Scottish roots, and that fascination with the uncanny which brought the creator of Mr Hyde screamingly awake one winter's night over 100 years ago.
About the Author, Robert Louis Stevenson, Roderick Watson
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born and educated in Edinburgh. He was a sickly child, and most of his adult years were to be spent traveling in search of a climate which would do least damage to his lungs. He began his writing career with essays, short stories, and travel writing, most notably Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (1879). He went to California to marry in 1880. The journey nearly killed him, but he wrote of his experiences in Across the Plains (1892), The Amateur Emigrant (1895), and The Silverado Squatters (1883). He is, perhaps, best remembered for his first novel Treasure Island (1883), and his early reputation was made with this and other examples of adventure fiction, not least Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which appeared as a paperback thriller in 1886.
