The Strange Case Of Dr Jeckyll And Mr Hyde

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

What we learned from Jeckyll and Hyde is that Frankenstein's monster is in all of us. Taking elements from the real-life case of Deacon Brodie, a respectable cabinet maker who was also a secret burglar, and from James Hogg's story of Calvinist guilt, The Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Robert Louis Stevenson fashioned something completely new. The idea that any one of us is capable of becoming the monster had never appeared in science fiction before; but since then the idea has never been absent. This is another story that has been presented so often on film and on stage that we all know the story, even if we've never read the book (though the book has a sense of violence and malevolence that has never quite been captured on film). Told by a lawyer, Utterson, the story introduces a hideous, brutal figure, Hyde, who seems to be an acquaintance of respected Doctor Jeckyll. Gradually we discover that Jeckyll has found a way to indulge in his vices by changing himself into Hyde, but the transformations have slowly got the better of him. Why it's on the list: This is another work whose title has entered the language. The central idea of the double, the other self, has become one of the keystones of all subsequent science fiction and horror...