The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Review
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This short novella that has become such a staple of our culture is a quick and easy read, but definitely rewarding. In most formats, the entire story takes up only 50-70 pages, and could be read in a single sitting of a couple of hours. Given this, you may hesitate to fork out your well-earned money for such a small amount of gratification, but if you can find this story as part of a collection or at a good discount (maybe an e-book), definitely go for it.
The novel version of Jekyll and Hyde is quite different from the many movie adaptations. For the most part, this version is more simple, with very little filler. Stevenson's original leaves much up to the readers' imagination, making the story even darker and more powerful, in my opinion. Apparently, the idea behind this book came from a very real fear of Stevenson's that he might be living a double life, in which he would unknowingly sneak out at night to commit atrocious misdeeds. Knowing this gives the story even more power, as you can sense the author's seriousness for the topic.
If you haven't before, make the effort to find a good copy of this novel. Written in only a couple of days, it is remarkable how integrated these ideas have become in our culture. Recommended.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Overview
This best selling classic is known for its stunning depiction of a split personality, split in the implication that within the same person there is both a seemingly good and an evil personality each being quite distinctive from the other.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Specifications
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
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