The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson - new softcover book Penguin Classic

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde

and Other Tales of Terror

by Robert Louis Stevenson

See other Novels and Modern Classics click here

New softcover book. 180 pages.

A man of medicine explores his darker side only to fall prey to it.

Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with 'damnable young man' Edward Hyde, the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer, and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil.

The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic genre: Olalla, a tale of vampirism and tainted family blood, and The Body Snatcher, which shows the murky underside of medical practice - a gruesome fictionalisation of the exploits of the notorious Burke and Hare.

This edition contains a critical introduction by Robert Mighall, which discusses class, criminality and the significance of the story's London setting. It also includes an essay on the scientific contexts of the novel and the development of the idea of the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was first published in 1886. It was an immediate success and is one of Stevenson's best-selling works. Stage adaptations began in Boston and London within a year of its publication and it has gone on to inspire scores of major film and stage performances.

The work is known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality each being quite distinct from the other. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.

About the Author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894) began to write for English magazines while in his twenties. In 1880, he married Fanny Osbourne, and the balance of his life was devoted to unremitting work and a search for health that took him to many corners of the world. He lived a short but productive life, and his books are characterised by well-wrought style, vivid imagination, memorable action and mastery of suspense. Stevenson's Calvinistic upbringing gave him a preoccupation with pre-destination and a fascination with the presence of evil. In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde he explores the darker side of the human psyche.

An omnibus edition of three of the finest horror novels of all time - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker and Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, with an introduction by Stephen King is also available. Click here for more information

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson