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Adam Weir, Lord Hermiston, the harsh, coarse and powerful 'hanging judge' of Edinburgh, despises his gentle son Archie. When Archie publicly protests against…
Adam Weir, Lord Hermiston, the harsh, coarse and powerful 'hanging judge' of Edinburgh, despises his gentle son Archie. When Archie publicly protests against the hanging of a man his father condemned, he is sent away to the family's lonely estate at Hermiston in the hills, where he falls in love with Christina Elliott, the niece of his housekeeper. But the arrival of the treacherous Frank Innes threatens them, and the story moves towards a confrontation between father and son.
Context and significance
Robert Louis Stevenson was writing the novel in Samoa when he died suddenly in 1894, and it breaks off in mid-sentence; many critics think it would have been his masterpiece. The judge was modelled on the real Lord Braxfield. Read Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae and Kidnapped.
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) came from a family of Edinburgh lighthouse engineers and was expected to follow them, but chose writing, despite lungs so weak he was often bedridden. He travelled constantly in search of health, married the American Fanny Osbourne and wrote Treasure Island for her son.
Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses followed, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. He died there at forty-four and is buried on a hilltop above his home.