Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories
    Ebook218 pages4 hours

    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories

    By Robert Louis Stevenson

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This collection features some of Robert Louis Stevenson's most disturbed tales, including the prolific gothic thriller The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

    Dr. Jekyll creates a drug that separates the good and evil in his heart, splitting his personality in two with horrific consequences. His wicked alter ego, Mr. Hyde, is the monster that evolves from this ghastly experiment, and although Dr. Jekyll desperately tries to fix his mistake, it might be too late…

    Fantasy and Horror Classics proudly presents this new edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's work. This collection is a must-read for fans of horror and classic literature, offering a timeless glimpse into the depths of human fear.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 19, 2012
    ISBN9781447480457
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories
    Author

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a Scottish novelist, travel writer, poet, and children’s author. Plagued by poor health his entire life, he was nevertheless an amazingly prolific writer, and created some of the most influential and entertaining fiction of the nineteenth century, including Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

    Read more from Robert Louis Stevenson

    Related to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Last Orders

      Jul 28, 2021

      Last Orders
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hello, Grim Reaper

      Dec 15, 2021

      She was a babe. A fully paid-up, card-carrying babe. There was absolutely no doubt about it, and she was heading straight for me. She was almost sprinting towards me across the recently reimagined lobby of Claridge’s. She looked up, her scarlet-anoin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Equinox

      May 18, 2022

      In this strange world, where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun, supernatural forces are at work – and they’re causing trouble… St Leonars prison was an appropriately imposing building. It rose out of the surrounding shacks and

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Escape Of Koravitch

      Sep 30, 2019

      The Escape Of Koravitch
      16 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Conversation

      Nov 1, 2023

      The Art Of Conversation
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Dec 1, 2020

      Table Talk
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Feb 24, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      7 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Feb 24, 2022

      It Happened to Me…
      7 min read

    • Article

      “Really?”

      Jun 2, 2022

      “Really?”
      6 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 12, 2021

      As long as there are authors, translators, publishers large or small committed to the deliberate word deliberately committed to the page, and so many who still need those words on pages, legal or illegal, right, left, or center, we’ll find our feet a

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Trials of Jared K.

      Apr 22, 2020

      The Trials of Jared K.
      6 min read

    • Article

      Community Of Peers

      Feb 10, 2021

      After the war, I travelled to a village in the south of the province. It was my intention to vacation for the weekend in an unknown land. I followed a small river that was alternately green beneath the foliage of the forest and blue while it coursed

      6 min read

    • Article

      My Cuppa With The Krays

      Sep 22, 2021

      My Cuppa With The Krays
      5 min read

    • Article

      LeTteR Bocks

      Aug 4, 2022

      ◻PLEASE find attached this trademark from a box of eggs, which appears to show a chicken lifting its leg to crack off an eggy one. Susan Butcher, Australia ◻FORMER Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for meeting an ex-KGB agent without h

      13 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Jul 15, 2021

      Further to Jenny Randles detailing the Oz-factor [FT398:30-31], I outline a strange experience with multiple witnesses. I had a chance to revisit the site of the event with my children and this sparked off a need to record what happened. In 1977 I wa

      7 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories

    4/5

    118 ratings128 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I am watching the new season of Penny Dreadful and they are featuring Dr. Jekyll this year. I realized I have never read this book, so I decided to pick it up in preparation for the show.

      The writing feels very dense, and the pacing is slow. The reader slowly gets a feeling of dread, rather than outright scares. This is common with many of the horror stories of the period that I have read.

      The story is interesting, with much musing on the nature of good and evil. It was a bit slower paced than I like, but this is a short book and easy to read in a day.
    • 5/5
      It's not called a classic without good reason. It's an almost perfectly plotted short novel, all the parts complementing each other, all serving to build tension and anticipation. The good doctor is suitably tragic, Hyde is suitably degenerate and, despite having seen the multitude of adaptations over the years, it still feels remarkably fresh and modern. All of Stevenson's stylistic flourishes are on show, as well as his rarely bettered storytelling ability. I'd give it six stars if I could.
    • 3/5
      Bet this was a blitz before everyone and their kid knew the secret twist. A fine gothic novella, proceeding on railroad towards the ending you already knew was coming.
    • 4/5
      Small but incredibly effective. Like, I know Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. Everyone knows that. I still felt actually horrified at the reveal of that fact, because Stevenson did such a good job drawing the main characters and the people surrounding them. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray, (Wilde was an admirer of the book), it explores inner and outer natures by dividing them, showing what people might do if it would never be found out and never physically affect them, and it's all the more compelling because their flaws start out so small and relatable. Jekyll didn't suffer from a deep dark secret at first, he just didn't want anyone to know about his small flaws. Excellent for the Halloween season, and especially good read in company with Dorian Gray, because both are so complete, so layered, and so subtle where it counts.
    • 3/5
      “... that man is not truly one, but truly two.”The idea that we all have a dark side? Well, certainly the main character of this story does! Dr. Henry Jekyll meets/creates/releases Edward Hyde, “The evil side of my nature,...”, and is not the same for it! It's a quick read, well except for the last chapter that draaaaags on, and an important story in the history of "horror" literature, so I'm glad I read it! Not scary by today's standards, but still a freaky idea and one that has been repeated often! I wonder which of my two halves would be the dominant one? Or do I have more than two? Hmm...
    • 3/5
      I was expecting more. Why? Because everyone knows the tale, I just assumed the writing would be better.
    • 5/5
      This is a re-read of this classic 19th century novella which has been the inspiration behind so many spin-offs since. It is a taut and atmospheric piece of writing, and the conclusion that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same, two sides of the same being, only becomes evident near the end - it is hard for us to understand how this would have shocked and thrilled the reader in 1886, so familiar has the Jekyll and Hyde motif become.
    • 4/5
      interesting... not what I remember from 15 yrs ago. that's what happens with memory and Hollywood influence.
    • 4/5
      might be the best crafted short story I've ever read
    • 4/5
      This is one of those classic stories it would be almost impossible to not be aware of on some level. The basic concept of the book is deeply ingrained in pop culture, but a lot of people probably haven't read the origin of what has become a legend of sorts.Reading the classics isn't always easy; the writing style being of a previous era. But it gives a new and interesting perspective to read the original texts that have spawned so many echoes through to the modern day.This book is a good place to start if you're wanting to start dipping into the classics. The older style might take some getting used to, but it's short. It would be easy enough to read the whole thing in a single quiet afternoon, but if read in smaller doses, still wouldn't take a terribly long time to get through.As with other classic works I've read, such as Frankenstein, the nuances and details were not quite what I expected. It has a much deeper reflection on human nature, for one.This is well worth reading, if only to see how the tale was originally portrayed.
    • 3/5
      I love the story. However, since nearly 98% of the population is familiar with this story, it is kind of a drag to read this since you know how everything unfolds. I also didn't find the way in which the story was told very captivating. It is such a thin book, and I had a terrible time getting through it. I actually skipped parts in this book because they were so dreadfully boring.
    • 4/5
      So short, but so powerful. This is one of those stories where you think you know how it goes, but upon reading you find that it has been re-interpreted for so many years in so many forms that it feels completely different. Well, not completely. But still, the decades of alterations made this novella feel fresh and rich. I would have liked it to be longer, since I was so drawn in by the world of dark clouds and sinister encounters, and the novella ends on an abrupt note. However, it was pleasingly eerie and direct while it lasted.
    • 5/5
      I wish people still wrote this way. Or at least, still wrote this way WELL.Just the first sentence is great. Stevenson really has a great way of describing people, both physically and characteristically.One of the most interesting things about this story is all the possibilities and underlying meanings you can get from it. The way Jekyll refers to both of his personalities in third person, his underlying thirst for and pleasure in evil, his addiction to Hyde, etc. It's actually pretty dark, and I'm sure we can all agree that Jekyll is a bit on the crazy side.But there's definitely a reason that Jekyll and Hyde have become household names and inspiration to countless stories and characters.
    • 5/5
      Great story. I was very surprised that the chronology was reversed. It starts at the end and works its way forward, a device that none of the knock-off versions of this tale use. A master story teller.
    • 4/5
      The classic story of the good, but boring Dr Jekyll who transforms himself into the vital and evil Mr Hyde. Jekyll comes to loath him, but has become addicted.
    • 4/5
      I originally selected this book because I have it on my bookshelf and I have never had the time to read it. I pulled it off the shelf and placed it by my bed with hopes to finish it before my reading class was over. As it turned out I just never found the time to crack open the cover. Therefore, I searched for the audio version. To my surprised I found it right away at a reseaonable price and by a narrartor with which I was familiar. I have listen to Dick Hill narrate several novels I have read by Sanda Brown. I listened to the book in one night. I was was intrigued by the story but also confused. I had a hard time following the narration. A few times I glanced through the book while i was listening to Dick read the pages. I was surprised with how difficult this book is to read. I didn't think it would be so complicated. I had never thought of this as a text for children, and now I really don't think that it is. I think the text is too difficult for many students, and students in the classes I teach would need a lot of background information taught before a story like this could be even be looked at. I do not forsee reading this book to my class, or for my class. I am glad I read the story and I feel it was important, but I think the text would be better suited for a college level course where students were able to talk about the characters in greater detail and with greater insight. I do recommend this book for adults. The text is a classic and it should still be read because it did explain what I knew about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
    • 3/5
      I fantom I would have liked this book a lot more if I didn't already know from the start who was Hyde. Nevertheless, it was actually very interesting once the "action" picked up. Although I found Utterson somewhat boring at times, the ending of the book made it worth it to see it through. The most interesting part was definitely the explanation of Dr Jekyll himself at the end, which I read eagerly. Overall, it was a nice book.
    • 5/5
      I liked this book a lot. It's a short book but it still has lots of mystery and exciting parts within it. It's about a man named Mr. Utterson who tries to learn about the mysterious Mr. Hyde who is Dr. Jekyll's evil side.In the book, the setting is based in England. Dr. Jekyll finds a way to make a compound that allows him to transform into a separate personality, Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde is a younger and pure evil being. I personally like Mr. Hyde's name a lot. His name sounds like the word "hide" and Mr. Hyde's personality reflects his name. He tries to be discreet and tries to not talk to anyone unless he has to. Throughout the book, Mr. Utterson tries to learn about this mysterious Mr. Hyde. Almost nobody knows about him. Finally, after many mysterious encounters with Dr. Jekyll and one murder, he learns who Mr. Hyde truly is when he reads a letter that was left for him. I also liked this book a lot because the story isn't just told from the point of view of one person. It's mainly told from the point of view from one person, but it's also told from the point of view of two other people.This book is very good! It makes you feel multiple emotions as you read it. It makes you excited, scared, surprised, and curious. I would recommend it to many people.
    • 5/5
      I had read this book many years back, and read it again. It is indeed one of the more fascinating books that I have read. It's been a while since I read some of the old classics ( I started with Bertie Wooster!), and it took one or two pages before I got back into the swing of it allThe concept is incredible, and does indeed hark to the present when we are trying all sorts of brain and other experiments. It does teach us the dangers of meddling too much with biology, and playing God. Beautiful book, Needs to be widely read again
    • 5/5
      I could not put this book down. I love it and I can't believe it took me this long to read it. I will definitely be re-reading this one next month and every October from now on.It is such an incredible story. Like me, you may know it from movies but, as always, the book is so much better. I cannot say enough good stuff about this it.Since it is so good and such a fast read, I will be making everyone I know read this. If you haven't read it yet, go read it right now. You wont regret it. Seriously, go! Right now!
    • 4/5
      This is the first time I've ever read the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'll admit I had no idea it was written by the same author as Treasure Island, which I also have not read yet. I would not have put those two ideas to the same author, so it's been enlightening all around! It's also amazing to me what a short story this really was, only 94 pages, to have inspired so many adaptations and interpretations, movies, etc.

      It was an interesting dark fantasy tale with an important lesson about giving in to our baser natures. The more we indulge them, the more it becomes who we are until we're no longer able to hide or control those tendencies.
    • 5/5
      "He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God there is no statute of limitations." - Utterson, Esq.The best thing about old books is the detail in the writing. It makes more obvious the complacency of mind found in the generation of television and wifi.Henry Jekyll recognized that man has two persons living inside them - both good and evil. He was bored with being the "good doctor" and wanted to indulge in mischief without being held accountable for his actions, so he freed his murderous, unscrupulous self in the form of Edward Hyde. At first, had it not been for his evil other's indifference toward him, Jekyll would have been tempted to remain the depraved Mr. Hyde, but eventually they came to resent one another and Hyde became Jekyll's ruin as happens when one chooses their evil self.I'm glad I read this book. I was expecting Mr. Hyde to be as big and ugly as he is in movies, but he was actually a petite man who had an appetite for very bad coupled with a malevolent countenance and a look of deformity that no one could put their finger on.Goodread!
    • 4/5
      Nice short read. Even though you know the ending ten pages in, I still enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      This book truly does earn the title of "classic". It has suspense, interesting characters, a fine storyline, and something that some books that are considered "classics" are lacking: a point. You could argue about whether the true demon of the story is man's nature, science, or the Promethian tendency of the eponimous doctor. However, the essence of the story is the classic "tradgedy" plotline: the hubris of the lead character leads to his downfall. I do emphasize the word "tragedy" in my review, as it's definitely not a happy-fun-time kind of book. But if you don't go into it expecting that, you will probably be perfectly satisified. In the end, I would say that the main flaw of this book is that it is infuriatingly short. You could almost complain that this book is nothing more than an extended short story. However, from another viewpoint this could be a virtue; what's better than a classic novel that can be read in less than two hours?
    • 4/5
      This creepy novel explores the good and evil found in all of us, as well as the marriage of science and mysticism, A fabulous horror classic!
    • 4/5
      This is a story of multiple personality person.He has two personality.One is very aggressive,another is calm.This is a interesting story.
    • 5/5
      Great piece of literature. Really interesting way of keeping the reader blind to very key pieces of information that would allow for easier identification of potential threats and climaxes. Really enjoy RLS and look forward to reading more of his work.
    • 5/5
      I wasn't sure what to really expect with this one. Yes, it's a classic that "everyone knows about," but I didn't really know what it was about going into reading it. I knew there was a Doctor who turns himself into Mr. Hyde (pure evil). I didn't really know the specifics or anything about other characters or story line in general.

      I have a somewhat ignorance with a good amount of classic books. I know them, I know enough to want to read them, but I don't peruse them further until I read them. This helps give me a fresh reaction to the story.

      So my reaction to this story was great overall. Like many classics I actually listened to the audiobook version (librivox.org is GREAT for this and my budget) because it helps me read them at a good pace and makes it easier for me to pay attention. I just can't read some of the writing sometimes no matter how beautiful. Ok, back to the review, haha. It was a great story with a mystery and a great moral dilemma about good and evil. I won't really get into much more though. I know it's short and I'm not saying really anything at all. But I really like Stevenson's writing and the horror added into the mystery of what's going on. I've read Treasure Island only from him, so this is number 2 I've read. I'll have to now go and read more of him since I'm enjoying it.
    • 3/5
      This books was surprisingly fun. It has a slow start for the first few pages, but after that it takes off.

      A quick fun little read, definitely worth the time.
    • 4/5
      The famous and classic story about a doctor who has discovered the way to divide the good and evil natures of himself into two different persons.My first surprise was how short this story is. My second was that we never actually meet Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde, except in passing. My third was that I have no greater understanding of how to interpret the book now than I did before, and perhaps even less. I'm glad I've read it at last. It is, as I said, short. The language, while stilted, isn't that difficult. It is thought provoking - the whole issue of the natures of good and evil and which is dominate in man - but maybe not as provocative now as it was when first published in 1886. I think its greatest value now is as a cultural icon, rather than a great story. But that is still terribly important.

    Book preview

    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde & Five Other Terrifying Short Stories - Robert Louis Stevenson

    1.png

    THE

    STRANGE CASE OF

    DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

    & FIVE OTHER

    TERRIFYING SHORT STORIES

    By

    ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

    INCLUDING THE ARTICLE

    Books Which Influenced Me

    Copyright © 2023 Fantasy and Horror Classics

    This edition is published by Fantasy and Horror Classics,

    an imprint of Read & Co.

    This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

    way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

    British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

    A catalogue record for this book is available

    from the British Library.

    Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

    For more information visit

    www.readandcobooks.co.uk

    Contents

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    BOOKS WHICH INFLUENCED ME

    An Article by Robert Louis Stevenson

    THE STRANGE CASE OF

    DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

    STORY OF THE DOOR

    SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

    DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

    THE CAREW MURDER CASE

    INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

    REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

    INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW

    THE LAST NIGHT

    DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE

    HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

    FIVE OTHER TERRIFYING SHORT STORIES

    THRAWN JANET

    THE BODY-SNATCHER

    THE SIRE DE MALÉTROIT’S DOOR

    THE BOTTLE IMP

    THE HOUSE OF ELD

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850. Aged seventeen, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, but he was a disinterested student whose bohemian lifestyle detracted from his studies, and four years later, in April of 1971, he declared his decision to pursue a life of letters. A keen traveller, Stevenson became involved with a number of European literary circles, and had his first paid piece, an essay entitled 'Roads', published in 1873.

    Stevenson suffered from various ailments and a weak chest for the whole of his life, and spent much of his adult years searching for a place of residence suitable to his state of ill health. In 1880, he married Fanny Van de Grift, and they moved between France, Britain and California together. It was during these years that Stevenson produced much of his best-known work—Treasure Island, in 1883, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in 1886, and Black Arrow, in 1888. Following the death of his father in 1887, Stevenson devoted his later years to travels in the Pacific. During the late 1880s, he spent extended periods of time in both the Hawaiian and Samoan Islands, befriending many native and colonial leaders of the day and writing a number of accounts of his travels. In 1890 he purchased a 400-acre tract of land in Samoa, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

    By 1894, still suffering from various ailments, he fell into a state of depression, and in December of that year, while straining to open a bottle of wine, he collapsed, most likely from a cerebral haemorrhage. A few hours later he was dead, aged just 44. Stevenson remains highly popular to this day, and is ranked the 26th most translated author in the world.

    BOOKS WHICH

    INFLUENCED ME

    An Article by Robert Louis Stevenson

    THE editor has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakens to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography; or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned: the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor) it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped me.

    The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our education is answered best by those poems and romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune to see, I must think in an impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was the burden of my reflections for long: so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is d'Artagnan—the elderly d'Artagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I know not a more human soul, nor, in any way, a finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim's Progress: a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.

    But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first; though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the Essais of Montaigne. That temperate and genial picture of life is a great gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of an antique strain; they will have their linen decencies and excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some excuse and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of reading) they will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of life, than they or their contemporaries.

    The next book, in order of time, to influence me was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move anyone, if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Anyone would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is perhaps better to be silent.

    I come next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book of singular service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion; and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank—I believe it is so with all good books, except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer around that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good.

    Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of Time, how much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked, like an algebraic symbol, but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput-mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer.

    Goethe's Life by Lewes, had a great importance for me when it first fell into my hands—a strange instance of the partiality of man's good and man's evil. I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very epitome of the sins of genius; breaking open the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, in the crowning offence of Werther; and in his own character, a mere pen and ink Napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained. Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. History serves us well to this effect; but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference of epochs instead of the essential identity of man; and even in the originals, only to those who can recognise their own human virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great Roman Empire.

    This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book—the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed, and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings—those very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies farther back, its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read, you carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to life and to the love of virtue.

    Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, the silence that there is among the hills, something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not—Mill did not—agree with any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such are the best teachers: a dogma learned is only a new error—the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the place of art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they communicate.

    I should never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist. It is art if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art; and from all the novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David; here is a book to send the blood into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture of human faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our neighbour; what we want is to be shown not his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. And The Egoist is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a satire of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted down, these are your own faults that are dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith's (as I have the story) came to him in an agony: This is too bad of you, he cried. Willoughby is me. No, my dear fellow, said the author, he is all of us. I have read The Egoist five or six times myself, and I mean to read it again; for I am like the young friend of the anecdote—I think Willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself.

    I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much that was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Hazlitt, whose paper On the Spirit of Obligations was a turning point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws—a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic Islands. That I should commemorate all, is more than I can hope or the editor could ask. It will be more to the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call it—by which a man rises to understand that he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he differs absolutely wrong. He may hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately; and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, or hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for him. They will see the other side of propositions and the other side of virtues. He need not change his dogma for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he must supplement and correct his deductions from it. A human truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite new, or that seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, he had better take to the daily papers; he will never be a reader.

    And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down my part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we are vessels of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome to the mind. A writer learns this early; and it is his chief support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at heart that most of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good for service; but he is sure besides that when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader, they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is kept as if he had not written.

    An article first published in

    British Weekly, 1887

    THE STRANGE CASE

    OF

    DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

    STORY OF THE DOOR

    Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye;

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1