Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel about a respected London doctor who discovers a drug that transforms him into a violent and depraved man, Edward Hyde. Told as a mystery investigated by the lawyer Utterson, it became an immediate success, and the names of its two heroes have passed into the language for a split personality.
The story
Mr Utterson, a sober London lawyer, hears of a sinister man named Hyde who trampled a little girl and paid compensation with a cheque signed by Utterson's respected friend, Dr Henry Jekyll. Utterson is all the more disturbed because Jekyll's will leaves everything to Hyde.
A year later, Hyde savagely murders a member of Parliament, Sir Danvers Carew, then vanishes. Jekyll shuts himself away. The mystery is solved only at the end, by two documents: the account of Dr Lanyon, who saw the transformation with his own eyes, and Jekyll's own full statement of the case.
Writing and publication
Stevenson wrote the story in Bournemouth in the autumn of 1885, while seriously ill. He had long been interested in the double nature of man, and as a boy in Edinburgh he had heard the story of Deacon Brodie, a respectable cabinet-maker who was secretly a burglar.
Longmans, Green published it in January 1886 as a shilling paperback. Helped by a glowing review in The Times and by sermons preached on it, it sold some forty thousand copies in Britain within six months, and many more in pirated American editions.
A modern myth
Readers have seen in the novel a study of Victorian hypocrisy, of addiction, of repressed desires and of the divided self that psychology would soon explore. Its structure, in which the secret is revealed only at the end, is that of a detective story.
Like Frankenstein and Dracula, it has become a modern myth, adapted in hundreds of plays, films and musicals, many of which reveal at the outset the twist that the first readers discovered only on the last pages.
Anecdotes
A suspect on the stage
In 1888 the American actor Richard Mansfield was playing Jekyll and Hyde in London when the Whitechapel murders began. His transformation on stage was so frightening that, according to accounts of the time, some newspapers and members of the public suggested he might be capable of the crimes, and the production was withdrawn.
A shilling shocker
The book was first published as a cheap paperback, known as a shilling shocker. Because the bookshops were full of Christmas books, its publication was put off until January 1886, and on some early copies the date 1885 printed on the paper cover was corrected by hand.
Frequently asked questions
Are Jekyll and Hyde the same person?
Yes. Hyde is the form Dr Jekyll takes after drinking a drug he has invented; the secret is fully revealed only in the final chapter.
Where is Jekyll and Hyde set?
In London, although many readers have seen in its streets something of the Edinburgh where Stevenson grew up.
When was Jekyll and Hyde published?
In January 1886, by Longmans, Green in London.