Stevenson Life Robert Louis originally Lewis Stevenson was

Stevenson

Life Robert Louis (originally Lewis) Stevenson was born in November 1850 in Edinburgh. His father wished he would enroll in Edinburgh University’s engineering department but Stevenson soon rebelled against this plan and reached a compromise with his father by pursuing legal studies.

Stevenson’s dissatisfaction with his father’s practical career advice was characteristic of his broader disillusionment with the ideals of Victorian society, dreaming of escape from engineering, from Scotland, and from Victorian responsibility in general.

The Victorian compromise The victorian age witnesses a sharp tension between upstanding duty and respect towards the society, on one side, and reckless abandon and the greed for freedom, on the other one.

Main Works • The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde • Treasure Island • Kidnapped • The Master of Ballantrae • New Arabian Nights

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Plot The plot is enterely based on the struggle between Dr Jekyll, a respectable man, and his dark side: Mr Hyde.

The Double “It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both. ” (Jekyll’s experiment)

Dr Jekyll and Dr Faustus

Treasure Island

Plot The story is set in the 18 th century and it tells the succession of adventures experienced by a young man: Jim Hawkins.

The Double: Sir Trelawney Is Jim a Gentleman or a Pirate? Captain Silver