ROBERT STEVENSON

Life :

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in Scotland in 1850 .At university
Stevenson cultivated a Bohemian lifestyle , but the severe Scottish climate, his bad
health and his love for travel made him spend long periods abroad . In 1888
Stevenson left with his family fore the South Seas and finally settled in Samoa .
In 1886 , he published his famous short novel : The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde.
In 1894 Stevenson died while working on what is considered his masterpiece : Weir
of Hermiston.

The Story
The story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is set in London. A lawyer called Utterson hears a
story from his cousin, about a young girl being run over by a brutal man called Hyde,
who then pays his compensation with money from Dr Jekyll’s account. one year
later, a girl sees Hyde kill a man with a stick. Utterson leads the police to Hyde’s
Apartment, but they discover the killer is missing. For some time everything goes
back to normal, but then Lanyon, a common friend of Jekyll and Utterson , dies in
mysterious happenings, and shortly after Jekyll locks himself in his laboratory .
Eventually, hearing strange sounds from the lab, Utterson and Jekyll' butler decide
to enter. Inside they find the body of Hyde who committed suicide. In the last part
of the novel, Jekyll’s letter describes how he was aware of a duality in human
nature, a mixture of good and evil. He reveals that he discovered a drug that can
divide these two sides of human nature, this personality, which Jekyll assumed from
time to time , began to take over the life of Jekyll . Jekyll understood that the only
solution was to kill Hyde, which meant killing himself in the process.