Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classics) - Softcover

Robert Louis Stevenson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451532252 ISBN 13: 9780451532251

Publisher: Signet Classics, 2012

Synopsis

Robert Louis Stevenson explores the very nature of man in this classic horror novel.

“Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.”

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.

Includes the Famous Cornell Lecture on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Vladimir Nabokov

With a New Introduction by Kelly Hurley
and an Afterword by Dan Chaon

About this title

About the Author

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 toAn 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 successDr. 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451532252
• ISBN 13: 9780451532251
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 144