Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece of the duality of good and evil in man’s nature sprang from the darkest recesses of his own unconscious—during a nightmare from which his wife awakened him, alerted by his screams. More than a hundred years later, this tale of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the drug that unleashes his evil, inner persona—the loathsome, twisted Mr. Hyde—has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative chillingly relates Jekyll’s desperation as Hyde gains control of his soul—and gives voice to our own fears of the violence and evil within us. Written before Freud’s naming of the ego and the id, Stevenson’s enduring classic demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the personality’s inner conflicts—and remains the irresistibly terrifying stuff of our worst nightmares.

Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, poet, and essayist, was born in Edinburgh on November 13, 1850. Ill health interrupted his formal education at Edinburgh University and plagued him throughout his life. Leading a bohemian existence during his twenties and thirties, his travels throughout Europe formed the basis of his first two books, An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels With a Donkey (1879). In 1875 he settled into the artists colony at Barbizon and began writing for English magazines. There he met Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, a married woman ten years his senior, with whom he fell in love. In 1879 he followed her to San Francisco (which gave rise to An Amateur Emigrant). After she obtained a divorce, they married and for the next eight years traveled a great deal in Europe and America in search of good health. Stevenson remained industrious and during this period wrote Treasure Island (1883), his first popular success. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped appeared in 1886, followed by The Black Arrow in 1888. The Stevensons finally settled in Samoa, where he became involved in politics and was known as Tusitala, the Teller of Tales. He was dictating Weir of Hermiston on December 3, 1894, the day he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Dan Chaon is the author of the novels Await Your Reply and You Remind Me of Me, and two short story collections, Fitting Ends and the 2001 National Book Award Finalist Among the Missing. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Story, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly, as well as Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize 2000. The recipient of numerous prizes and honors, he is the Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Oberlin College.