Review
The many films of the Jekyll and Hyde story make you overlook what a cracking good writer Stevenson was. Read with gothic gusto, this tragic tale of the intellectually curious Dr Jekyll overpowered by his murderous alter ego is still horrifying. --Rachel Redford, The Observer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Patricia O'Neill, Hamilton College, Clinton
"Danahay's edition justifies our on-going admiration for this masterpiece of English literature."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Midwest Book Review
"This scholarly edition is highly recommended for personal and academic library collections and literary studies reading lists."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Gordon Hirsch, University of Minnesota
"...this edition will be a boon to the classroom or to an individual's private enjoyment of this classic tale."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Patricia O'Neill, Hamilton College, Clinton
"Martin Danahay's edition justifies our on-going admiration for this masterpiece of English literature."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Gordon Hirsch, University of Minnesota
"[T]his edition will be a boon to the classroom or to an individual's private enjoyment of this classic tale."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Everyone has a dark side.
Dr Jekyll has discovered the ultimate drug. A chemical that can turn him into something else. Suddenly, he can unleash his deepest cruelties in the guise of the sinister Hyde. Transforming himself at will, he roams the streets of fog-bound London as his monstrous alter-ego.
It seems he is master of his fate.
It seems he is in complete control.
But soon he will discover that his double life comes at a hideous price ...
From the Publisher
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.
Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Author
The world of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of locked doors, secrets, watchers and witnesses. It is a world where feeling must be muffled, and relationships simmer with what is withheld.
It is also, almost entirely, a male professional world. The focus is on those who dominated and shaped Victorian Britain. Robert Louis Stevenson, child of the Scottish professional middle class, knows what lies beneath its dissembling of individuality in the service of social order and cohesion. As the hidden, unruly self grows powerful, it may bear the fruit of nightmare.
The story opens in the company of the respectable, and obliges us to see the action through their eyes. Utterson, the lawyer, is coolly undemonstrative, and forms friendship where he feels no warmth. Richard Enfield, ‘the well-known man about town’, is young enough to be more expressive, but he already knows that it’s best not to try to open the locked doors of others’ lives, for fear of scandal. The ‘great’ Dr Lanyon is enraged by anything which does not fit his rational, scientific principles. He has seen himself as the professional brother of Dr Jekyll, but that brotherhood has been destroyed by Jekyll’s inadmissible, ‘unscientific’ conduct. - From the Foreword by Helen Dunmore --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
It is also, almost entirely, a male professional world. The focus is on those who dominated and shaped Victorian Britain. Robert Louis Stevenson, child of the Scottish professional middle class, knows what lies beneath its dissembling of individuality in the service of social order and cohesion. As the hidden, unruly self grows powerful, it may bear the fruit of nightmare.
The story opens in the company of the respectable, and obliges us to see the action through their eyes. Utterson, the lawyer, is coolly undemonstrative, and forms friendship where he feels no warmth. Richard Enfield, ‘the well-known man about town’, is young enough to be more expressive, but he already knows that it’s best not to try to open the locked doors of others’ lives, for fear of scandal. The ‘great’ Dr Lanyon is enraged by anything which does not fit his rational, scientific principles. He has seen himself as the professional brother of Dr Jekyll, but that brotherhood has been destroyed by Jekyll’s inadmissible, ‘unscientific’ conduct. - From the Foreword by Helen Dunmore --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
'...as I looked there came, I thought, a change - he seemed to swell - his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter...'
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish essayist, poet and author of fiction and travel books, was known especially for his novels of adventure. Stevenson became famous with the romantic adventure story Treasure Island, which appeared in 1883. Among his other popular works are Kidnapped (1886), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and The Master Of Ballantrae (1889).
Excerpted from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (100 Pages) by Helen Dunmore, Robert Louis Stevenson. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lit 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 heresy2,’ he used to say quaintly: ‘I let my brother go to the devil in his 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 friendships 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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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 friendships 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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
