The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
()
About this ebook
The novella’s impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the very phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.
Related to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Titles in the series (18)
Sister Carrie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Christmas Carol Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrankenstein or The Modern Prometheus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite frang Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPride and Prejudice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTreasure Island Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnne of Green Gables Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wind in the Willows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaddy Long Legs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alices Adventures in Wonderland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Men in a Boat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRobinson Crusoe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGulliver’s Travels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Prince and the Pauper Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Secret Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related ebooks
A Phaery Named Phredde and Other Stories to Eat with a Banana Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Invisible Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sixteen Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComplete Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrim Fairy Tales for Adults Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass: And What Alice Found There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shadowings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSo Festy! Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Northanger Abbey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice and Vampires Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Ghost Stories by Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, Charles Dickens and Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Castle of Otranto (Unabridged) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Island of Dr. Moreau Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nutcracker and Mouse King (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Nonsense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGuy Mannering: The Astrologer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5David Copperfield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsH. P. Lovecraft: The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Willows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manfred: A Dramatic Poem: “Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOthello Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWar in Hagwood Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Adventures of Pinocchio Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54 Classic Ghostly Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Chimes: A Goblin Story Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Singer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
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
FOREWORD
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, musician and travel writer. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins
.
His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child’s Garden of Verses.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886. The names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the two alter egos of the main character, have become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella. The work is also known as Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.
The novella’s impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the very phrase Jekyll and Hyde
entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil.
Roza Grage
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; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.
‘I incline to, Cain’s heresy,’ he used to say. ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his quaintly: ‘own way.’ In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point, a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the for- mer lifted up his cane and pointed.
‘Did you ever remark that door?’ he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, ‘It is connected in my mind,’ added he, ‘with a very odd story.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, ‘and what was that?’
‘Well, it was this way,’ returned Mr. Enfield: ‘I was com-ing home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’ clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all the folks asleep — street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church — till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the, child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some