Edinburgh

Cabinet 18

Ghosts, witches, tales of horror, the supernatural, and murder litter the literature of Scotland, with Edinburgh revealing a distinctly dark vein.

Indeed, ‘Auld Reekie’ has been dubbed the capital of weird, and the creepy capital.

After dreaming ‘a fine bogey tale’, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. First published in January 1886, this tale of duality with the interplay between good and evil was a great success for him, selling nearly 40,000 copies within six months.

Capitalizing somewhat on this ‘dark vein’, the Scottish Studies Centre at the University of Otago is running a ‘Tartan Noir’ paper for students to enrol in.

This limited edition copy of Stevenson’s classic was printed in Dunedin.

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dunedin: The Gumtree Press, 2010.