Overview

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is an 1886 Gothic horror novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the most famous pieces of English literature, and is considered to be a defining book of the gothic horror genre. The novella has also had a sizeable impact on popular culture, with the phrase ""Jekyll and Hyde"" being used in vernacular to refer to people with an outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil nature The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the classic novella of split personality. Stevenson wrote it in just a few days while sick and bedridden, and famously burned the first draft after his wife suggested it should be written as an allegory and not as a story. He re-wrote it in three to six days, and after a few weeks of editing and revision he published what would become one of his most famous and best-selling works.The story follows a London lawyer as he investigates the relationship between a brilliant scientist and a misshapen misanthrope. As the link between the two becomes clearer, Jekyll and Hyde develops into an allegory on the nature of good and evil. Stevenson had long been intrigued by the idea of how human personalities can reflect the interplay of good and evil. While still a teenager, he developed a script for a play about William Brodie, a Scottish cabinet-maker, deacon of a trades guild, and Edinburgh city councillor, who maintained a secret life as a burglar in order to fund his mistresses and gambling addiction, which Stevenson later reworked with the help of W. E. Henley and which was produced for the first time in 1882. Inspiration may also have come from the writer's friendship with an Edinburgh-based French teacher, Eugène Chantrelle, who was convicted and executed for the murder of his wife in May 1878.[6] Chantrelle, who had appeared to lead a normal life in the city, poisoned his wife with opium. According to author Jeremy Hodges, [7] Stevenson was present throughout the trial and as ""the evidence unfolded he found himself, like Dr Jekyll, 'aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde'."" Moreover, it was believed that the teacher had committed other murders both in France and Britain by poisoning his victims at supper parties with a ""favourite dish of toasted cheese and opium"".

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ReceptionPublicationThe book was initially sold as a paperback for one shilling in the UK. These books were called ""shilling shockers"" or penny dreadfuls.[36] The American publisher issued the book on 5 January 1886, four days before the first appearance of the UK edition issued by Longmans; Scribner's published 3,000 copies, only 1,250 of them bound in cloth. Initially, stores did not stock it until a review appeared in The Times on 25 January 1886 giving it a favourable reception. Within the next six months, close to 40 thousand copies were sold. As Stevenson's biographer Graham Balfour wrote in 1901, the book's success was probably due rather to the ""moral instincts of the public"" than to any conscious perception of the merits of its art. It was read by those who never read fiction and quoted in pulpit sermons and in religious papers.[37] By 1901, it was estimated to have sold over 250,000 copies in the United States.[38] Stage versionAlthough the book had initially been published as a ""shilling shocker"", it was an immediate success and one of Stevenson's best-selling works. Stage adaptations began in Boston and London and soon moved all across England and then towards his home country of Scotland.[24] The first stage adaptation followed the story's initial publication in 1886. Richard Mansfield bought the rights from Stevenson and worked with Boston author Thomas Russell Sullivan to write a script. The resulting play added to the cast of characters and some elements of romance to the plot. The addition of female characters to the originally male-centred plot continued in later adaptations of the story. The first performance of the play took place in the Boston Museum in May 1887. The lighting effects and makeup for Jekyll's transformation into Hyde created horrified reactions from the audience, and the play was so successful that production followed in London. After a successful 10 weeks in London in 1888, Mansfield was forced to close down production. The hysteria surrounding the Jack the Ripper serial murders led even those who only played murderers on stage to be considered suspects. When Mansfield was mentioned in London newspapers as a possible suspect for the crimes, he shut down production.

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