The Writers Museum
The Writers Museum is a literary museum in Edinburgh dedicated to the lives and works of three of Scotland’s greatest writers: Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson. For the purposes of this article, I’ll focus on the Robert Louis Stevenson rooms but the entire museum is worth exploring, with its wealth of artefacts from the lives of all these writers. It also contains a lovely little gift shop with friendly staff, where you can buy books by and about these authors, as well as other items by local creatives, such as jewellery.
The museum is located off the Lawnmarket stretch of the Royal Mile. It’s quite easy to miss the entrance to the large courtyard in which it’s situated, but if you look for Deacon Brodie’s Tavern at the corner of the High Street and Bank Street, you’re almost there. Just continue walking up the Royal Mile for another minute and you’ll see the entrance to Lady Stair’s Close on the right.
Walk through the Close and you’ll immediately see Lady Stair’s House, the rather curious-looking building which houses The Writers Museum.
Before entering the building, it’s worth looking around the courtyard itself, specifically at the flagstones on the ground. Many of these are inscribed with quotes from famous Scottish writers. Not surprisingly, one of them, which can be found on the steps leading up to the museum from the Mound, has a quote from RLS:
Known as Makars’ Court, this area with the inscribed flagstones is described on Edinburgh Museums’ website as ‘an evolving national literary monument’.
Once you’ve had a look around the courtyard, you can enter the museum through its low doorway and go down the narrow, spiral staircase. This leads to a short, red-painted corridor with the name Robert Louis Stevenson written on one of the walls. At the end of the corridor is the entrance to the two rooms that house a treasure trove of Stevenson memorabilia, including books, portraits, and personal items. Some of this material was originally housed at 8 Howard Place, where Stevenson was born, during the period when the Robert Louis Stevenson Club maintained a museum there.
The Literary Tourist 
CONGRATULATIONS: A wonderfully crafted narrative accopanied by high calibre sensitive photography.
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Thank you, Rex!
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