Book description
Shorter Scottish Fiction. Introduced by Roderick Watson. Ever since its
first appearance in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde has proved itself to be a tale of undiminished power
for readers all over the world. It remains one of the great masterpieces
of psychological fiction and yet it is not alone in Stevenson's work,
for he had explored similar themes in several other stories too, all
inextricably linked with his native country. 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 a hundred years
ago.
