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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories
The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster
The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.—
The bottle imp.—
Markheim.—
The beach of Falesa.—
Thrawn Janet.—
The isle of voices.—
Will o' the mill.—
The body snatcher.—
Prividence and the guitar.—
The enchantress.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1886
4 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson
6,918 books6,961 followersRobert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.
Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.
Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 4, 2009
Jekyll and Hyde: The dual nature
This is also available at my blog, 149 Novels.
There's a popular question: if you could choose a super power, would you choose flight, or invisibility? The question is deceptive, because it's not just about entering the world of comic book heroes. It's about why you want that power. People who want to fly want to get someplace quickly, want to stop paying for transportation, and want to show off. In an episode of This American Life, one man specifically says that all the girls would want to sleep with the flying guy. People who want to be invisible want to get into movies for free, spy on people, and steal clothing - assuming anything that they are wearing is also invisible. No one would use their powers to fight crime (which is reasonable, because they do not have super strength, or immortality).
I thought of this question and its moral implications while reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr. Jekyll believes that all humans are divided creatures, split between good and evil. He wishes that the human mind could be freed from the struggle to reconcile the two, and so he uses his medical knowledge of drugs and their side effects to make a compound that will divide the low from the high. He feels as if doing this will allow him to become two separate people, and even creates a name for his darker self. But he soon learns that he cannot be free from the crimes of Mr. Hyde, which were far darker than he predicted.
I liked this story a lot, and recommend it. It's good to read a well-known classic and see how it was originally presented, free from the various adaptations. I like that, while it is essentially a horror story, it has an element of science fiction, with Jekyll's reference to experimenting with drugs that have known side effects. I was delighted that it is not revealed that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person until you are well into the novel, which seems to me an especially Victorian element. It's smartly written with an effort towards timelessness - Hyde goes out at night and does evil things. We don't know what - it is left to us to imagine what he does, to adjust his crimes to our own sense of evil.
According to some reading I've done on the novel's meaning, the Victorian interpretation was that good and evil exist in everyone, and attempts to repress your darker nature will cause it to erupt, and will cause great outbursts of evil. In my own reading of the novel, I perceive that Jekyll was more evil than he admits before dividing his soul. He wished that he could live without the struggle between his evil nature and Victorian morality, and his desire to free his evil side is the goal, not an effort to create a personality of pure goodness. At his transformation, he delights in the feeling of losing the reservations of morality. Only in fear for his life does he regret what he has done. The true horror of the tale is that he is a man without remorse throughout.
-----------------------------------
Next up is Dune by Frank L. Herbert. It comes highly recommended by a few fans of the novel. It is also difficult to find at the library; the library search engine is not designed to provide simple results for a simple search. When you type in "Dune", it pulls up an entire page of various novels in the Dune series, putting them in no logical order, so that you have to move on to the second page of results just to locate the first novel in the series. And of course, then you have to keep searching to find copies that are available at your local library. I think the catalog divides them between distinct editions of books, because a search for one novel may turn up several different results which are all the same novel, along with a few books about Dune, a book on dune buggies, and a children's book about deserts.
This is not meant as a complaint on my local libraries, which are excellent. I just wish some local benevolent tech genius would donate a new search engine to the library.
This is also available at my blog, 149 Novels.
There's a popular question: if you could choose a super power, would you choose flight, or invisibility? The question is deceptive, because it's not just about entering the world of comic book heroes. It's about why you want that power. People who want to fly want to get someplace quickly, want to stop paying for transportation, and want to show off. In an episode of This American Life, one man specifically says that all the girls would want to sleep with the flying guy. People who want to be invisible want to get into movies for free, spy on people, and steal clothing - assuming anything that they are wearing is also invisible. No one would use their powers to fight crime (which is reasonable, because they do not have super strength, or immortality).
I thought of this question and its moral implications while reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr. Jekyll believes that all humans are divided creatures, split between good and evil. He wishes that the human mind could be freed from the struggle to reconcile the two, and so he uses his medical knowledge of drugs and their side effects to make a compound that will divide the low from the high. He feels as if doing this will allow him to become two separate people, and even creates a name for his darker self. But he soon learns that he cannot be free from the crimes of Mr. Hyde, which were far darker than he predicted.
I liked this story a lot, and recommend it. It's good to read a well-known classic and see how it was originally presented, free from the various adaptations. I like that, while it is essentially a horror story, it has an element of science fiction, with Jekyll's reference to experimenting with drugs that have known side effects. I was delighted that it is not revealed that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person until you are well into the novel, which seems to me an especially Victorian element. It's smartly written with an effort towards timelessness - Hyde goes out at night and does evil things. We don't know what - it is left to us to imagine what he does, to adjust his crimes to our own sense of evil.
According to some reading I've done on the novel's meaning, the Victorian interpretation was that good and evil exist in everyone, and attempts to repress your darker nature will cause it to erupt, and will cause great outbursts of evil. In my own reading of the novel, I perceive that Jekyll was more evil than he admits before dividing his soul. He wished that he could live without the struggle between his evil nature and Victorian morality, and his desire to free his evil side is the goal, not an effort to create a personality of pure goodness. At his transformation, he delights in the feeling of losing the reservations of morality. Only in fear for his life does he regret what he has done. The true horror of the tale is that he is a man without remorse throughout.
-----------------------------------
Next up is Dune by Frank L. Herbert. It comes highly recommended by a few fans of the novel. It is also difficult to find at the library; the library search engine is not designed to provide simple results for a simple search. When you type in "Dune", it pulls up an entire page of various novels in the Dune series, putting them in no logical order, so that you have to move on to the second page of results just to locate the first novel in the series. And of course, then you have to keep searching to find copies that are available at your local library. I think the catalog divides them between distinct editions of books, because a search for one novel may turn up several different results which are all the same novel, along with a few books about Dune, a book on dune buggies, and a children's book about deserts.
This is not meant as a complaint on my local libraries, which are excellent. I just wish some local benevolent tech genius would donate a new search engine to the library.
March 23, 2018
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of my favorite stories; I have always been a fan of all things dealing with psychology and the duality of man, and this story really delves into that. Has been on my shelf since I was a teen, and I refer to it often. The Bottle Imp is a great one too, dealing with damnation and riches.
May 23, 2010
I've known about this story for years, but I'd never read it until I picked it up last week. It was shorter than I had expected it would be, but it was still a great creepy read. :)
July 11, 2024
Heard about this book for years. Finally read it. Good book.
September 19, 2021
I’m in awe of Robert Louis Stevenson writing style. He can dive between adventure, horror, and mystery seamlessly. After reading this collection of short stories by this fantastic writer, I realized “Twilight Zone” the TV show used many of his short stories.
February 4, 2024
Eine interessante Geschichte! Wie verrückt darf ein Ende sein? Ja !
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August 30, 2023This is for school. 30.08.2023
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews