Robert Louis Stevenson

By: nelson Williamson

Victorian Age

• Wide spread of scientific, technological,

and social changes were going on.

• Entertainment during this periods was theatre and the arts. Music, drama, and opera was widely attended. There were, other forms of entertainment. Gambling at cards in establishments popularly called casinos was wildly popular during the period.

• Hygiene surgeries were very hazardous during this era. Illnesses were very common and disastrous. Surgeons did not wash or clean their hands prior to performing surgery and this caused many infections.

Victorian Age News Report

The of Birth Stevenson

• Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 13 1850.

Childhood • Stevenson's father “Thomas Stevenson” was particularly

religious man.

• His mother “Margaret Balfour” was the daughter of a Scottish clergyman.

• As a child he was raised by Alison Cunningham his nurse who is also know as “Cummy” also a religious woman.

• So by the time stevenson was a toddler cummy had read the bible to hi m several times over.

• by age 4 he was writing devotional stories.

• Stevenson also suffered from tuberculosis so he spent most of his childhood in ded.

Maturing

• At age 16 he had already produced a short historical tale

• Attended the Edinburgh University to study engineering do to his illness he had to abandon his plans of following his fathers foot steps.

• His first article was published in the

Edinburgh University magazine (1880).

About the Novel

• Allegedly he wrote this book because he was desperate for money and fighting a depression.

• The story provoked an extreme public reaction, unsettling many because it appeared some what plausible.

• The character of Dr. Jekyll is one of the first literary figures who experiments with mind- and personality altering drugs.

• Critics relate a variety of elements in the story to the times in which the story is set

• One of the most common interpretation examines the characters of Jekyll and Hyde as metaphors for Victorian social codes.

• “I often am struck by ideas that come to me in my dreams inspired by personal muses”

• He wrote this dream down and completed the first draft three days later.

•  

• Dr. Henry Jekyll

• Biography

• Henry Jekyll was a prominent middle-aged doctor. He was extremely wealthy, having a fortune well over two million dollars and was well respected and proper. Jekyll’s obsession with the idea that within each human being there exists two countering forces, good and evil, led to his experiments that tried to separate the two. This, however, was not done merely for scientific reasons, but also because he enjoyed escaping the confines of the respectable guise of Dr. Jekyll, now Hyde comes when Jekyll is under stress and seems to be taking control.

• Mr. Edward Hyde   • • Biography• A younger man that Henry Jekyll, Edward is somewhat

deformed (or de-evolved), and he seems to be growing taller as the years go on. Despite his appearance he can be civilized with others, and sometimes heroic. Dr. Jekyll describes Hyde as "pure evil," and he menaces society at night, trampling a girl in the street and murdering Sir Danvers Carew, before being caught by Allan and Sawyer in Paris where he was recruited for the League.

Settling Down • In 1879 Stevenson moved to California with Fanny

Osbourne, whom he had met in France. They married in 1880, and after a brief stay at Calistoga, they returned to Scotland but moved often in search of better climates.

• From the late 1880s Stevenson lived with his family in the South Seas, in Samoa. Fascinated by the Polynesian culture,

• Stevenson died on December 3, 1894, in Vailima, Samoa.

• His last work, Weir Of Hermiston (1896), was left unfinished.

The End