The Strange Case of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Submitted by:
CARL OWEN L. AYCARDO
GRADE 10 - DIAMOND

Submitted to:
MS. HELEN B. HERMIDA
TITLE : The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

AUTHOR : Robert Louis Stevenson

TYPE OF BOOK : NOVEL (Gothic mystery)

CHARACTERS OF THE STORY

MAIN CHARACTER:

Dr. Jekyll/Mr.Hyde

The main character of the novel. Dr. Jekyll is a respectable London scientist who is able, through
the use of a mysterious potion, to transform into the savage, uncontrollable Mr. Hyde at a
moment’s notice in order to live out his darker desires. There is some debate over what extent the
two characters, Jekyll and Hyde are truly the same person. They are so opposing in every way
that they seem to not even be adequate friends until the ending reveals the twist. This, of course,
was Stevenson’s point in writing the story. To illustrate the opposing forces of good and evil in
every person. The evil side that lurks behind the polite facade of every person. Because of this, in
order to fully understand either character, we must consider them as one person and judge their
actions accordingly. In fact, neither man is particularly interesting when taken alone, it is only
together that they make a compelling story.

While it’s true that Jekyll is supposed to be considered the moral and decent side of the pair, and
he is shown doing things like giving to charity withing the narrative, Jekyll never fully represents
a truly moral man in the same way that Hyde represents evil. Jekyll only undertakes the
experiment with the idea of separating his good side from his bad and thus, leaving his good side
totally pure but only succeeds in giving life to his bad side, leaving a bad side and a normal self.
And, if anything, giving birth to this bad side makes Jekyll less than virtuous as a character as it
absolves him of any blame for the bad actions that he is still committing as Hyde.

Jekyll almost seems to imply that if he had begun the experiment with purer motives an angelic
side may have emerged instead of Hyde. But the fact that it was Hyde that emerged from Jekyll’s
experiment seems more than a chance thing and something that is perhaps, because of Jekyll’s
normal state of mind. That is, that Hyde already existed within the doctor and drinking the potion
only let him out, instead of creating him.

Hyde himself is a darker relic of a past when man did not feel the need to struggle to fit into
polite society. He is Jekyll’s animalistic side, and thus is described as such.

OTHER CHARACTERS:

Mr. Utterson

The narrator for much of the novel. Though he is not technically the main character, the story is
told through Mr. Utterson’s eyes and perceptions. Utterson is the perfect image of an upright
Victorian man. He is most likely what Jekyll was before the intervention of Hyde. Utterson is
moral, a man of his word and not a man of any strong passions or evil desires. His character is
specifically written to be not only a template for what Jekyll is running from in doing his
experiment but as a good touchstone for the reader to insert themselves into. He is interested in
investigating the mystery that suddenly befalls his friend and in many ways throughout the short
novel he is shown to be a good, loyal friend. He does not gossip about people and even when he
suspects that Jekyll may have broken some laws he does not damage his friend’s reputation with
any information that he does not know for sure to be true.

Dr. Lanyon

Jekyll’s colleague and former friend. When we first meet Lanyon in the novel he tells Utterson
that he has had a falling out with Jekyll over something professional. He says that Jekyll’s new
line of research is “balderdash”. From this, we are to assume that Jekyll shared some of his early
research into the potion with Lanyon and that Lanyon, being a rational man and a skeptic,
thought it was nonsense. In this way, he is presented as a foil for Jekyll although the two only
have one scene together in the narrative. Because of this difference of opinion, it is appropriate
that Lanyon is the first person to actually see Jekyll transform. The rational man is subjected to a
physically impossible sight that he must rationalize. Lanyon is not able to do this and suffers a
shock that kills him weeks later. It’s as if some part of Lanyon prefers to expire rather than
continue on in a world where such a metaphysical event could happen.

SETTING : The setting took place in London England in the year (1885 and 1886)

PLOT OF THE STORY:

CONFLICT:

Jekyll attempts to keep his dark half, Edward Hyde, under control and then to prevent
himself from becoming Hyde permanently.

RISING ACTION:

On his weekly walk with his friend and kinsman Enfield, Mr. Utterson, a lawyer, finds
himself standing in front of a dark and mysterious door on an otherwise nice street. Enfield
relates a night when he ran into a man who had to go into that door. He had knocked over a
young girl, and rather than cause a scene, he paid off her family using a check in the name of a
well-established man in London. Enfield relates that the man who knocked the girl over was
named Hyde.

CLIMAX:

With the information from Enfield, Utterson grows increasingly concerned about his
friend Dr. Jekyll, who had recently changed his will to instruct that if anything happened to him,
everything should be given to Hyde. Utterson is worried that Jekyll is being blackmailed by
Hyde. Furthermore, he is increasingly alarmed by Hyde’s appearance, which seems to summon
horror and hatred in anyone who observes him.

One could argue for two different climaxes. The moment when Utterson breaks down the
door to Jekyll’s laboratory and finds Hyde’s corpse constitutes a climax in that Utterson finally
admits and accepts that something terribly wrong has taken place. But one might also see the
novel’s climax as arising within Lanyon’s letter, at the moment that he witnesses Hyde’s
transformation into Jekyll and the mysterious connection between the personas is finally
explained.

FALLING ACTION:

Late one night, a maid of Dr. Jekyll’s witnesses the brutal beating murder of a Sir
Danvers Carew by Edward Hyde. Utterson goes to Jekyll, who assures him that Hyde is gone for
good. He gives Utterson a letter from Hyde, which Utterson later suspects Jekyll has forged.
Jekyll’s servants are frightened by things they’ve heard and seen in Jekyll’s laboratory, so they
summon Utterson. They knock down the door to the laboratory and find Hyde dead from poison.

RESOLUTION:

After Hyde’s disappearance, Jekyll sent a desperate letter to Dr. Lanyon, begging him to
get a drawer from his laboratory. Hyde comes to pick it up, mixes up the contents, and drinks the
mixture. He transforms into Henry Jekyll in front of Lanyon’s eyes. Lanyon is so distraught that
he dies a few weeks later. He relates all of these events to Utterson in a letter to be opened only
in the death or disappearance of Dr. Jekyll.

CONCLUSION:

Utterson next reads a letter from Dr. Jekyll, which was left to him in the laboratory, along
with a new copy of Jekyll’s will, leaving everything to Utterson. It relates that all his life, Jekyll
felt that there were two sides to himself. Through various experiments, he unleashes Mr. Hyde,
who is pure evil and thrilling to be. Eventually, however, Hyde begins to take over Jekyll, and
Jekyll begins to fear and hate him.

SUMMARY

Two men named Mr. Utterson and Mr. Enfield are walking along on a nice street in
London, England on a Sunday afternoon. Mr. Utterson is a lawyer and a well-respected and
wealthy one. He is a reserved man, but an honest one and a good friend as he is always willing to
lend a hand to those in need when the situation calls for it. Mr. Enfield is his distant relative and
also a well-bred gentleman of London. The two are friends, although they have little in common.
They take this walk through town weekly and often go quite a distance in companionable silence,
neither saying a word to the other.
 As they are walking on this particular Sunday, however, Enfield notices a neglected, run
down building that is at odds with the rest of the prosperous neighborhood. Enfield has a story
relating to the building and decides to tell it to Utterson. He says that one night, after dark he was
walking in this neighborhood when he saw a small, misshapen man bump into a young girl and
trample over her. Enfield manages to stop the man and keep him from getting away. A crowd
gathers around the girl and when her assailant is revealed the crowd is disgusted by him. He is
revealed to be very ugly and grotesque. The crowd defames the man and tells him that they will
ruin his good reputation if he does not make amends. The man offers to buy them off and goes
into the neglected building only to return with a check moments later. The check, Mr. Enfield
notes, bares the name of a very reputable man around town although he refuses to reveal to the
crowd who it is. Enfield wonders if the misshapen little man has blackmailed the respectable
man but he cannot see that the check is a forgery or a fake.

Back in current time, Utterson asks a few leading questions about the incident that make
Enfield wonder if the man knows more about this than he lets on. Enfield reveals that he “never
saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scared to know why”. He tells Utterson that the man’s name
was Hyde and Utterson reveals that he knows this man and, furthermore, he can guess whose
name was on the check. However, since both men are respectable and honest men who do not
seek to gossip they do not reveal the man’s name and agree to never discuss the topic again.

Utterson hurries back home. He recently drew up a will for a prominent man in town
named Dr. Jekyll and wants to review it again based off of the conversation he had with Mr.
Enfield. The will states that all of Dr. Jekyll’s worldly assets were to transfer to a man named
Mr. Edward Hyde in the event of his death. While drawing up the will, Utterson had thought this
was odd and now that he knows something of this Mr. Hyde’s character from Enfield’s story he
is more convinced than ever that the man has some untoward control over Dr. Jekyll.

Utterson visits another doctor who is a friend of Jekyll’s, Dr. Lanyon. But Lanyon reveals
that he has long since fallen out of communication with Jekyll and knows nothing of anyone
named Mr. Hyde. Lanyon notes that he and Jekyll fell out over a professional dispute and calls
Jekyll’s new line of research “unscientific balderdash”. That night as he is sleeping, Utterson
dreams of a frightening man knocking over a small girl in the street. In the dream, the man
appears by Utterson’s bedside and beckons him to rise.

The next day Utterson returns to the neglected building with the design of speaking to this Mr.
Hyde. After a while of waiting, Hyde exits the building. He is a small man and young, too.
Utterson introduces himself, saying that he is a friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Hyde greets him but
keeps his head down. Mr. Utterson asks Hyde to look up at him so that he will know his face if
he sees him again. Hyde does so and Utterson is taken back by the man’s ugliness but, like
Enfield, he cannot discern why it is that Hyde is so ugly. Hyde tells Utterson his own address and
Utterson takes this a sign that he will be waiting to have his money sent to him after Jekyll’s
death.

At this point, the reader discovers an additional fact that Utterson is familiar with. The
neglected building is actually a laboratory attached on the opposite side to Dr. Jekyll’s
townhouse. Utterson circles the building to get to the entrance of the townhouse and is admitted
in by Dr. Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole. Poole tells Utterson that Jekyll is not home and, when
questioned about Mr. Hyde, the butler informs Utterson that Hyde has a key to the laboratory and
all of Jekyll’s servants have orders to obey Mr. Hyde. Utterson now feels that Mr. Hyde is
blackmailing Dr. Jekyll in some way. He worries about his friend as he heads back to his own
house.

Jekyll throws a lavish dinner party two weeks later and Utterson takes it as an
opportunity to speak to Jekyll privately about the will. At first, Jekyll seems cheerful about the
subject but he quickly turns serious and even frightened when Utterson tells him that he has been
researching Mr. Hyde. Jekyll insists that Mr. Hyde is not blackmailing him and that he can be rid
of him whenever he chooses. But he emphasizes that he has a great interest in Hyde at the
moment and that he wishes to provide for him. Jekyll makes Utterson vow that he will carry out
his will as he wrote it.

The next chapter, chapter Four, begins one year later. A house maid has just woken and is
looking out the window of her room. As she looks out she witnesses a murder in the street below.
She sees Mr. Hyde, whom she recognizes as he comes upon a polite, older man. The man offers
Hyde a greeting and Hyde as if suddenly seized by an unspeakable rage, turns and beats the man
to death with his walking stick. The police arrive and find a letter addressed to Utterson on the
corpse. Utterson is summoned and identifies the man’s body as Mr. Danvers Carew, a member of
Parliament and one of his top clients. The police inform Utterson that their culprit is Mr. Hyde
and Utterson tells them that he still has Mr. Hyde’s home address.

Utterson goes with the police to Mr. Hyde’s home which is for the poor, run down the
side of town. Utterson recognizes that it is odd that a man who is heir to Dr. Jekyll’s considerable
fortune would live in such squalor. Hyde has a landlady who is herself very ugly and evil-
looking. She lets the police and Mr. Utterson in but informs them that Mr. Hyde is not home.
Inside Hyde’s home, the police find the murder weapon and the burned remnants of Mr. Hyde’s
checkbook. They learn that Hyde still has an account at the bank listed on his checks and
theorize that they need only wait till he goes to the bank to withdraw money. However, after
waiting weeks Hyde still does not reappear. The police are unable to find any sign of him or
anyone who can even give an accurate description of his features.

Utterson pays a visit to Jekyll whom he finds in his laboratory looking sickly. Jekyll tells
Utterson that Hyde has left town and that their previous relationship has ended. Jekyll shows
Utterson a letter written to him by Hyde assuring him that he is leaving and that he feels
unworthy of Jekyll’s friendship and generosity. Jekyll is unsure of what to do with the letter as
he worries giving it to the police could damage his reputation. Utterson asks Jekyll if Hyde was
the one who came up with the terms of the will, including the provision that Hyde should inherit
the fortune if Jekyll were to simply go missing. Jekyll admits that he did and Utterson informs
him that Hyde probably meant to kill him and that he is lucky to have avoided it.

Utterson takes the letter and leaves. On his way out of the house, Utterson asks Poole to
give him a description of the man who delivered Mr. Hyde’s letter. But Mr. Poole is surprised.
He claims to have no knowledge of any mail other than the usual being delivered, and no letter
from Mr. Hyde. Utterson, following a hunch, takes the letter to a friend of his, Mr. Guest who is
an expert in handwriting. Mr. Guest compares Hyde’s letter with some of Jekyll’s writing and
confirms that the two were written by the same hand. Hyde’s writing was merely written by the
opposite hand as Jekyll’s as if to avoid detection. Utterson believes that Jekyll may have forged a
letter from Mr. Hyde and is shocked at the idea.

In the months following Hyde’s disappearance, Jekyll begins to recover both physically
and mentally, in the eyes of Utterson. He seems to be healthier and more social and begins to
devote his time to charity. Utterson observes that the removal of Mr. Hyde’s negative influence
in Jekyll’s life has improved the man for the better.

Two months after Hyde left, Jekyll holds a dinner party where he and Utterson and Dr.
Lanyon converse like old friends. However, when Utterson attempts to visit again a few days
later, Poole tells him that Jekyll is not taking any visitors. After a full week of not being able to
see Jekyll, Utterson visits Lanyon in the hopes that he will have some information about Jekyll.
Instead, Utterson finds Lanyon is very poor health. Lanyon tells him that he has had a bad shock
and expects to die within the next few weeks. Utterson attempts to get more information but
Lanyon begins speaking nonsense and demands that they speak of anything but Jekyll. He tells
Utterson that after his death Utterson may learn of what has happened to him but for the moment
he will not discuss it.

Utterson returns home and writes to Jekyll asking about why he is not taking visitors and
what caused the rift between him and Lanyon. Before long, Jekyll replies in a letter of his own.
He tells Utterson that he still cares for Lanyon but understands why the doctor has told him that
they must not meet. He tells Utterson that he cares for him, also but from now on he needs to
stay secluded away from people. He says that he is suffering a punishment that he cannot speak
of. Weeks later, Lanyon dies as he predicted he would. After his funeral Utterson finds a letter
addressed to him in Lanyon’s safe. However, inside the envelope is another letter with
instructions printed on the outside to keep closed until after Jekyll has also died. Utterson is
desperately curious to discover it contents, but being a principled man does as he is told and puts
the letter away without reading it.

The next Sunday as Utterson and Enfield are taking their walk they pass the laboratory
again. Enfield notes that London will never see Hyde again and that he has probably
disappeared. The two men stop to look up at Jekyll’s house and Utterson tells Enfield of his
concern for Jekyll. However, to their surprise the men see that Jekyll is standing at a window,
breathing in the fresh air. When they shout up to him, Jekyll complains that he feels “very low”
and Utterson asks if he would like to join them on their walk. Jekyll tells them that he cannot
leave the house and a frightened look suddenly crosses his face. He quickly closes the window
and disappears. Utterson and Enfield walk away in shocked silence.

Unexpectedly, Mr. Poole comes to visit Utterson one night after dinner. The man appears
agitated and says that he feels that some “foul play” has befallen Dr. Jekyll. Poole quickly
escorts Utterson back to Jekyll’s townhouse through the dark and windy night. When they reach
the house all of the servants are gathered, fearfully in the main hall. Poole and Utterson walk to
the door of Jekyll’s laboratory and Poole calls for his master. He tells him that Utterson is there
and a strange voice that Utterson doesn’t recognize replies that he isn’t taking any visitors.
 Poole brings Utterson to the kitchen where he tells him that the voice coming from the
laboratory is not Dr. Jekyll’s. Utterson points out that a murderer would hardly remain in the
laboratory after killing Jekyll. Poole then tells him that the strange voice has been sending him
on errands to chemists, looking for an ingredient that Poole cannot find in any drugstore. Poole
has been receiving notes of instruction and Utterson asks if the notes are in the doctor’s hand.
Poole then says that he saw the person come out briefly to search for something and he looking
nothing like Jekyll. In fact, he looked like Mr. Hyde.

This revelation sways Utterson into insisting that he and Poole break into the laboratory
to see what has happened to Jekyll. He stations two servants at the laboratories outside the door
so that Hyde cannot escape and arms himself with a fireplace poker and Poole with an ax. At the
door, Utterson calls out to ask for admission. The voice inside begs for Utterson to leave him
alone. Utterson recognizes the voice as Mr. Hyde and demands that Poole break down the door.

Once they get inside the laboratory, they find Hyde lying on the ground with a crushed
vial in his hand. Utterson recognizes that he has poisoned himself. He also notes that Hyde is
wearing a suit that appears to be Jekyll’s and is much too large for him. The servants search the
laboratory for Jekyll but cannot find him. They do find a large mirror and Utterson thinks that it
is strange to find such an item in a scientific laboratory. On one table Utterson finds a letter
addressed to himself that contains a will that leaves all of Jekyll’s assets to Utterson instead of
Hyde and a note to Utterson that, according to the date, is from that day. The note tells Utterson
to go home and read the letter that Lanyon gave him and says that if he needs more information
he can read the last thing that Jekyll has left for him a note that is labeled: “Your worthy and
unhappy friend, Henry Jekyll”. Utterson promises Poole that he will return shortly and send for
the police and then heads back to his house to read the letter that Lanyon gave him.

Chapter nine, the second-to-last chapter in the story, is an exact transcription of Lanyon’s
letter to Utterson. Lanyon writes that he received a strange letter from Jekyll after his last dinner
party. The letter asked Lanyon to go to Jekyll’s townhouse and break into the upper room of
Jekyll’s laboratory. Once inside, Lanyon was to take a specific drawer and it contents back home
with him and wait for a man who would come at midnight. The letter offered no explanation for
the instructions but promised Lanyon that if he did these things he would understand everything
soon.

Lanyon did as the letter instructed and then returned home to wait for the mysterious
man. Inside the drawer, Lanyon found a few vials, one containing what appeared to be salt and
one containing a strange, red liquid and a notebook filled with notes on experiments. Lanyon
began to wonder if Jekyll had gone insane, but at midnight a strange, small man appeared. It was
Mr. Hyde, but at the time Lanyon had not seen the man and therefore didn’t recognize him.

Hyde seemed excited and slightly desperate, he did not engage in polite conversation and
demanded the drawer. Lanyon gave them to him and Hyde then began mixing the ingredients in
the vials. The mixture became purple and then green. Hyde then paused and asked if Lanyon
wanted to see him drink the mixture and witness something that would “stagger the unbelief of
Satan”. Lanyon declared that he was so involved already he may as well see the rest of it and
Hyde drank the mixture. Before Lanyon’s eyes, Hyde’s small body seemed to swell and shift
until, before long Dr. Jekyll was standing in his place. Lanyon ends the letter here, saying that
Jekyll told him something afterward that so shocked him that it wrecked his constitution and lead
to his illness which then led to his death.

In the last chapter of the book, we are told what the contents of Jekyll’s letter to Utterson
are. Jekyll tells the story of how he got involved in this miraculous experiment, saying that he
was born into a wealthy family with a healthy constitution but always felt that he had a secret,
frivolous and indecent side that he was hiding from polite society. By the time he was a man, he
felt as though he had two sides to him and that the moral side was always guilty for the things the
darker side indulged in. His scientific studies led to studies of the mystical side of nature and he
got it in his head that he should somehow be able to separate the good and evil sides of the
human spirit. Jekyll says that “man is not truly one, but two”.

After much research, Jekyll eventually created the potion that would do this. After adding
salt as the last ingredient, he took the potion. At first, he experienced only nausea and pain but as
those subsided he realized that he had become the shrunken, hideous Mr. Hyde and felt filled by
all the bad aspects of his personality. He wonders if Hyde’s size can be attributed to the fact that
he represented his evil side and nothing else. Jekyll soon came to enjoy the recklessness that
came from living as Hyde. He began to indulge in his evil desires and even set up a bank account
and a home for Hyde. When he transformed back into Jekyll he was free from any guilt over the
actions of Hyde as he felt like they had been done by another person, although he did try to right
any wrongs he had caused as his alter ego.

However, soon Hyde began to be a cause for concern. Jekyll first noticed that something
was wrong when he involuntarily transformed into Hyde overnight without the aid of the potion.
This scared Jekyll enough that he vowed to stop becoming Hyde, but it only lasted two months
as he began to miss being able to live out his evil side. When Hyde returned he was even more
savage and vengeful than before as he had been repressed so long. It was at this time that he beat
the man, Carew to death with his cane. Hyde did not feel remorse for the murder but Jekyll was
beside himself with despair. Jekyll once again vowed that he would never transform into Hyde
again and it was during this time that Jekyll appeared to be in better spirits to his friends.

However, after a time Jekyll began to indulge in his dark desires again. This time, he
intended to do it without transforming into Hyde, but the delight of doing evil again made him
spontaneously transform into Hyde while away from home. He felt brave and powerful as Hyde
but he knew that he could not return to his home for fear of being caught by the police. It was
then that he sent word to Lanyon to fetch his potion for him. After that, he had to begin taking a
double dosage of the potion every six hours to avoid turning into Hyde again. As soon as the
potion began to wear off the transformation would start again. It was one of these exact moments
that caused him to step back from the window while he was talking to Utterson and Enfield in
the street.

In his final hours, Hyde continued to grow stronger as Jekyll grew weaker and the
ingredients necessary for the making of the potion began to run out. Jekyll ordered more
ingredients, particularly salt and discovered that the salt he used for the original must have had
some small impurity that made the potion work. Jekyll realized with terror that he was soon to
become Hyde permanently. He used the last of his potion to buy himself some time to write the
letter to Utterson. He tells Utterson that he doesn’t know if Hyde will kill himself or allow
himself to be arrested but he does know that by the time that Utterson reads the letter, Henry
Jekyll will be no more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson is best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island, and
the adult horror story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Both of these novels have
curious origins. A map of an imaginary island gave Stevenson the idea for the first story, and a
nightmare supplied the premise of the second. In addition to memorable origins, these tales also
share Stevenson’s key theme: the impossibility of identifying and separating good and evil.
Treasure Island ‘s Long John Silver is simultaneously a courageous friend and a treacherous
cutthroat, and Dr. Jekyll, who is not wholly good but a mixture of good and evil, is eventually
ruled by Hyde because of his own moral weakness. With Silver, Jekyll, and others, Stevenson set
standards for complex characterization which were adopted by later writers. His method of
rendering ambiguous, enigmatic personalities was one of Stevenson’s greatest literary
contributions.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850, Stevenson was the only child of Thomas
Stevenson and Margaret Balfour. Inheriting the weak lungs of his mother, he was an invalid from
birth. Before he was two years old, a young woman named Alison Cunningham joined the
household to act as his nurse. It was to her that Stevenson dedicated A Child’s Garden of Verses
over thirty years later. The sheltered, bedridden nature of his childhood is revealed in this
collection through poems like “The Land of Counterpane.”

Not all of his childhood was spent in the sickroom, though. During the summer he lived in the
country at Colinton Manse where he played outdoors with his many cousins. Most sources say
Stevenson was six years old when, competing against his cousins, he won a prize from one of his
Balfour uncles for a history of Moses. His next composition was “The Book of Joseph.”
Stevenson’s first published work, The Pentland Rising, was also on a religious theme, recounting
an unsuccessful rebellion by Covenanters in 1666. Stevenson wrote the account when he was
sixteen, and his father had the pamphlet published at his own expense. As these compositions
show, young Stevenson was tremendously influenced by the strong religious convictions of his
parents. During his college years, however, his beliefs underwent a sharp reversal.

He had attended school since he was seven, but his attendance was irregular because of poor
health and because his father doubted the value of formal education. Later, however, Stevenson’s
father was severely disappointed with his son’s performance at the University of Edinburgh.
Stevenson entered the university when he was sixteen, planning to become a lighthouse engineer
like his father. Instead of applying himself to his studies, he became known for his outrageous
dress and behavior. Sporting a wide-brimmed hat and a boy’s velveteen coat, Stevenson was
called “Velvet Jacket.” In the company of his cousin Bob, Stevenson smoked hashish and visited
brothels while exploring the seamy side of Edinburgh. At twenty-two, he declared himself an
agnostic, crowning his father’s disappointment in him.

In order to appease his father, Stevenson studied law. He was called to the bar in 1875, but never
practiced. While at the university, Stevenson had trained himself to be a writer by imitating the
styles of authors William Hazlitt and Daniel Defoe, among others. Before and after receiving his
law degree, Stevenson’s essays were published in several periodicals. A constant traveler for
most of his adult life, he based his first two books, An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a
Donkey in the Cevennes (1879), on his excursions in France. Many of his journeys were
searches for climates which would ease his poor health, but he also had an innate wanderlust. His
trip to America in 1879, however, was made to pursue a woman.

Three years earlier, Stevenson had met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American woman
eleven years his senior, at an artist’s colony near Paris. At the time she was separated from her
husband and living abroad with her two children. Although Stevenson fell in love with her,
Fanny returned to her California home and husband in 1878. But in August of the following year,
Stevenson received a mysterious cable from her and responded by immediately leaving Scotland
for America.

The journey almost killed him. On August 18, 1879, Stevenson landed in New York having
traveled steerage across the Atlantic. Already ill, his health became worse as a result of crossing
the American plains in an emigrant train. Impoverished, sick, and starving, he lived in Monterey
and then San Francisco, nearly dying in both places. His suffering was rewarded, for Fanny
obtained a divorce from her husband, and on May 19, 1880, she and Stevenson were married.
For the honeymoon, the couple, Fanny’s son Lloyd, and the family dog went to Mount Saint
Helena and lived in a rundown shack at Silverado. All of Stevenson’s American adventures
became material for his writing. Silverado Squatters (1883) chronicles his honeymoon
experiences, while Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays (1892) and The Amateur
Emigrant from the Clyde to Sandy Hook (1895) relate his trip to California. Only a year after he
had left Scotland to pursue her, Stevenson brought Fanny back to his own country. He, Fanny,
and Lloyd eventually settled in a Braemar cottage in the summer of 1881, where Stevenson
began writing Treasure Island.

Lloyd, Stevenson’s twelve-year-old stepson, was confined inside the cottage during a school
holiday because of rain, so he amused himself by drawing pictures. Stevenson recalled in his
Essays in the Art of Writing that he would sometimes “join the artist (so to speak) at the easel,
and pass the afternoon with him in a generous emulation, making coloured drawings. On one of
these occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully
coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me
like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance
`Treasure Island.’”

Filling in the map with names like “Spye-Glass Hill” and marking the location of hidden treasure
with crosses, Stevenson conceived the idea of a pirate adventure story to supplement the
drawing: “the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary
woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters,
as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat
projection. The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of
chapters.” He had completed a draft of chapter one by the next morning.

On October 1, 1881, Young Folks magazine began publishing the tale serially under the
pseudonym of Captain George North. In this medium, the story received little notice. Fanny
confessed that she didn’t like Treasure Island and was against it ever appearing in book form.
Nevertheless, it was published as a book late in 1883 and became a best seller. In Stevenson’s
lifetime the number of copies sold reached the tens of thousands. Reviewers declared that this
work of sheer entertainment had single-handedly liberated children’s literature from a
constraining, didactic rut.

In 1882 Stevenson and Fanny moved to Hyeres in the South of France. There Stevenson suffered
a hemorrhage which confined him to bed, prevented him from speaking, and rendered him
incapable of writing prose. Simple verse was within his capabilities, so while he recovered he
wrote most of A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885). Stevenson had followed up Treasure Island
with another boy’s adventure story called The Black Arrow, which was published serially in
Young Folks in 1883 and as a book in 1888. Although more popular with the juvenile readers of
Young Folks than Treasure Island had been, The Black Arrow is far from being a classic. His
next serial was a distinct improvement. Kidnapped ran in Young Folks in 1886 and was
published as a book the same year. Set in the Scottish Highlands in 1751, the story relates the
wanderings of young David Balfour in the company of the reckless Alan Breck. Kidnapped was
an achievement on a level with Treasure Island, and its characters are in many ways superior.
Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver of the earlier book are charming stereotypes, but Balfour and
Breck are personalities with psychological depth. Seven years after Kidnapped, Stevenson wrote
a sequel called Catriona, but it did not measure up to the original work.

Kidnapped was written in Bournemouth, England, which had been the Stevensons’ home since
1884. Although the novel earned Stevenson some recognition, it was not his biggest success in
1886, for this year also marked the publication of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
This novel was sparked by a dream Stevenson had at Bournemouth in which he visualized a man
changing into a monster by means of a concoction made with white powder. Stevenson was
screaming in his sleep when Fanny woke him. He scolded her for interrupting the nightmare: “I
was dreaming a fine bogey tale,” he said. He started writing furiously in bed the next morning. In
three days he had a completed draft of almost 40,000 words. He read the story proudly to Fanny
and Lloyd, but Fanny’s reaction was strangely reserved. Finally she declared that Stevenson
should have written an allegory instead of a straight piece of sensationalism. A heated argument
arose which drove Lloyd from the room. Even though Fanny’s instincts about Treasure Island
had proven to be completely wrong, this time Stevenson heeded her advice. Throwing the first
manuscript into the fire, he rewrote the tale as an allegory in another three days, and then
polished it over six weeks. Although he would later claim that it was the worst thing he ever
wrote, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sold forty thousand copies in Britain during the first six months,
and brought Stevenson more attention than he had previously ever known.

After living temporarily at Saranac Lake, New York in 1887, Stevenson, Fanny, Lloyd, and
Stevenson’s widowed mother began touring the South Pacific the following year. Eventually, the
clan settled on the island of Upolu in Samoa in 1890. At the foot of Mount Vaea, Stevenson had
a house built which was called Vailima. Continuing to write, he also became an advocate for the
Samoans who named him “Tusitala,” teller of tales. On December 3, 1894, at forty-four years of
age, Stevenson died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He left unfinished Weir of Hermiston, which
promised to be his single greatest work. A path was cleared by nearly sixty Samoan men to the
summit of Mount Vaea, where Stevenson was buried.

Immediately after his death, biographers and commentators praised Stevenson lavishly, but this
idealized portrait was attacked in the 1920s and 1930s by critics who labeled his prose as
imitative and pretentious and who made much of Stevenson’s college-day follies. In the 1950s
and 1960s, however, his work was reconsidered and finally taken seriously by the academic
community. Outside of academia, Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde continue to be
widely read over a century after they were first published, and show promise of remaining
popular for centuries to come.