Located off Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile, the Writers’ Museum gives locals and tourists alike a glimpse into history. Its collections focus on the lives of Scotland’s three most celebrated literary legends: Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

“They’re all just supreme storytellers,” says Gillian Findlay, the curatorial and engagement manager at Museums & Galleries Edinburgh. “They all, in their own ways, were able to speak with lived experience of the Scottish culture and Scottish society.”

The elegant museum building with its striking stone exterior was once a 17th-century townhouse owned by Scottish noblewoman Elizabeth Dundas (a.k.a. Lady Stair). Since then, much work has been done to preserve and restore the structure, and it was eventually given to the City of Edinburgh. In 1907, Lady Stair’s House became a museum of art and social history.

Over time, “the venues have become more specialized,” says Findlay, noting that there are four museums along the Royal Mile and several others throughout the city. The Writers’ Museum is one of the most-visited sites. Internationally and across generations, the works of Burns, Scott and Stevenson have an enduring appeal.

“In my view, you can’t really understand the present until you understand the past,” says Findlay. “I think, for that reason, it’s important to preserve their stories — because they speak so specifically to a time and place in Scotland.”

Despite its dedication to the written word, the Writers’ Museum is not an archive or literary depository. “It was felt that there were other places where the works of those writers are best protected and preserved, such as the National Library of Scotland,” explains Findlay.

“Much of what we have is about their domestic life or the ways that they worked or the things that influenced their writing.”

The Writers’ Museum has a younger demographic and tends to attract more tourists than locals. Findlay says they’re working to attract more local patrons, but admits that has its challenges. The space is not designed for large numbers of people, and with its narrow staircases, it’s not very physically accessible. Only about 16 people can safety fit in the museum’s main hall, making it ill-suited for many events.

Those who do visit the museum, though, are in for some fascinating exhibits. Patrons will come upon artifacts such as a rocking horse that was made for a young Sir Walter Scott. “If you look very closely at the rocking horse, you can see it’s been adjusted so that one of the stirrups is higher than the other,” says Findlay. Due to an infection of polio that disrupted his growth, one of Scott’s legs was slightly longer than the other. “I think that’s really touching.”

The Robert Louis Stevenson exhibit includes a wooden cabinet made by Deacon William Brodie, a respected Edinburgh businessman who maintained a secret life as a serial thief. Brodie was found out and subsequently hanged for his crimes in 1788, but his story is believed to have inspired Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (published almost a century after Brodie’s death).

There are some modern additions to the museum as well. As part of a project titled “Disrupting the Narrative,” four local writers of colour (Hannah Lavery, Jeda Pearl Lewis, Niall Moorjani and Shasta Ali) were invited to contribute work that responded to the Royal Mile museums through a “decolonizing lens.” Some of their poems are on display at the Writers’ Museum through August 2025. This is part of Museums & Galleries Edinburgh’s effort to address the city’s legacy of racism and slavery.

“I think it’s really imperative that public bodies are actively trying to do that,” says Findlay. “Not to negate the importance of our collection and writers like Burns, Scott, and Stevenson, but to make the point that this is one aspect of our literary heritage and, my goodness, there’s so much more.”

To be sure, these men were as complex as they are influential. Robert Burns, for instance, once accepted a job on a slave plantation in Jamaica. (Thanks to the success of his book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Burns never actually made the move.) Should Edinburgh live up to its designation as a UNESCO City of Literature, it must champion writers outside of “dead white men.”

To that end, the Writers’ Museum is now offering space for a pilot program specifically for contemporary women writers: the Mary Ratcliff Writer’s Room residency. This paid program aims to help writers build their portfolio.

“I’m delighted that the Writers’ Museum – which is this home to this important, but male-dominated, historical writing – is the place to do that,” shares Findlay.

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