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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Signet Classics) Mass Market Paperback – December 4, 2012
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“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
- Print length144 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSignet
- Publication dateDecember 4, 2012
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions4.13 x 0.38 x 6.75 inches
- ISBN-100451532252
- ISBN-13978-0451532251
- Lexile measure450
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A scientist creates a potion to separate his good and evil sides, but the evil side turns out to be a murderous monster.Popular highlight
This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.1,275 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.1,255 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
“If he be Mr.Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr.Seek.”1,140 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Kelly Hurley is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she teaches Victorian studies, literary theory, and popular culture. She is the author of The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle, as well as various articles on Victorian and contemporary Gothic. Her next book is on horror film spectatorship.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a trilingual household; he could read and write in English before Russian or French. His family went into exile after the Bolshevik revolution and lived in various European cities, including Berlin and Prague. In 1940, Nabokov and his wife and son fled the Nazis to America, where he taught college and wrote Lolita (1955). After that book’s tremendous success, he was able to write full-time and moved back to Europe, eventually settling in Montreaux, Switzerland. Among his other notable books are Pale Fire (1962) and Ada (1969). In addition to his writing, he was a noted entomologist specializing in butterflies.
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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted 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 theater, 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 heresy," 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 downgoing 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 friendship 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.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point, a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed.
"Did you ever remark that door?" he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, "It is connected in my mind," added he, "with a very odd story."
"Indeed?" said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, "and what was that?"
"Well, it was this way," returned Mr. Enfield: "I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all the folks asleep--street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church--till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had turned out were the girl's own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child's family, which was only natural. But the doctor's case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black, sneering coolness--frightened too, I could see that--but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan. 'If you choose to make capital out of this accident,' said he, 'I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene,' says he. 'Name your figure.' Well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child's family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door?--whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts's, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can't mention, though it's one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that, if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. 'Set your mind at rest,' says he, 'I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.' So we all set off, the doctor, and the child's father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genuine."
"Tut-tut," said Mr. Utterson.
"I see you feel as I do," said Mr. Enfield. "Yes, it's a bad story. For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good. Black mail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining all," he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing.
From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: "And you don't know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?"
"A likely place, isn't it?" returned Mr. Enfield. "But I happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or other."
"And you never asked about the--place with the door?" said Mr. Utterson.
"No, sir: I had a delicacy," was the reply. "I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."
"A very good rule, too," said the lawyer.
"But I have studied the place for myself," continued Mr. Enfield. "It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. There are three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they're clean. And then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. And yet it's not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about the court, that it's hard to say where one ends and another begins."
The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then "Enfield," said Mr. Utterson, "that's a good rule of yours."
"Yes, I think it is," returned Enfield.
"But for all that," continued the lawyer, "there's one point I want to ask: I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child."
"Well," said Mr. Enfield, "I can't see what harm it would do. It was a man of the name of Hyde."
"Hm," said Mr. Utterson. "What sort of a man is he to see?"
"He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment."
Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight of consideration. "You are sure he used a key?" he inquired at last.
"My dear sir . . ." began Enfield, surprised out of himself.
"Yes, I know," said Utterson; "I know it must seem strange. The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because I know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have been inexact in any point, you had better correct it."
"I think you might have warned me," returned the other with a touch of sullenness. "But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow had a key; and what's more, he has it still. I saw him use it, not a week ago."
Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently resumed. "Here is another lesson to say nothing," said he. "I am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to this again."
"With all my heart," said the lawyer. "I shake hands on that, Richard."
Searching for Mr.Hyde
THAT EVENING Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll's Will, and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with destestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.
Product details
- Publisher : Signet; Reissue edition (December 4, 2012)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0451532252
- ISBN-13 : 978-0451532251
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Lexile measure : 450
- Item Weight : 2.55 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.13 x 0.38 x 6.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #294,337 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #195 in British & Irish Horror
- #1,229 in Gothic Fiction
- #7,484 in Classic Literature & Fiction
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I wrote my first novel at age 3, taking a ream of paper and a pen and mimicking the squiggly writing that I had observed grown-ups using. Okay, it was twenty pages of scribbles, but to me it was the Great American Novel, and my grandmother seemed to be pleased with it. Today I still enjoy writing novels, short stories, novellas, screenplays, stage plays, and lyric plays. Perhaps the mark of the writer is not what he writes, but that he writes. I always enjoyed comedy, so my first few efforts were of a comedic nature, and I will always instill some humor even into my more serious, mainstream works.
I have been trying to crack the secret to writing classics; I try to read mostly authors whose works have remained in print for eighty years or more. Still, I have time for more contemporary works, like those of Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and Douglas Adams, to name but a few. I think I may have struck upon the crucial sequence, plots, characters, writing style and everything to keep me published for a hundred years or more. Now I just need to sell some books.
I have recently resettled in San Antonio, Texas, to try to remember the Alamo. No matter how deeply I concentrate, it still feels a little before my time.
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Bob Neufeld is an experienced audiobook narrator and voice actor with dozens of titles under his belt, including many classics of English literature and the bestselling fantasy works of D.P. Prior (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf).
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“The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde” has long been a favorite of mine. Read first when I was barely a teenager, I was both intrigued and frightened by the idea of the good and evil within us all being divided between two selves: one possessed of good qualities, and one inherently evil. The thought of two halves of the same person, each taking their turn at the helm of one being that bent to their figure and form was fantastical, but also quite terrifying. The good side, tall, erect, and seemly (the good face of the good doctor), and the evil side, squat, soul-deformed, and bent over with the weight of sin (the evil face of the dark and formless night of which it was born). And, what if then one became stronger than the other?
The thought and questions do not end there because the tale is haunting. It is thought-provoking. The “what-if” proposed pulls us in to our own natures where good and evil war within us all the time. Each of us has had a malicious thought. Our evil side draws it out of us as if from the depths of a pit, and thrusts it into the light of our consciousness. Our good sides vanquish it…eventually. Only a minuscule few would ever act upon such thoughts. Then, the “what-if”: What if one could do such deeds as the day would quake to look upon (paraphrase from Hamlet) and then retreat blameless and undetectable under the cover of a good and trusted face? And what if that side were then able to slip the confines of that which controlled it, as it wished? Which side would our natures choose should the same happen to us? I’d like to think the good side would win…but who really knows what lurks in the darkness of even the best of us?
As always, Richard Armitage delivers a powerhouse performance! His seamless transition in speech between Jeckyll and Hyde is unnerving and effectively chilling. I loved every word of it! Bravo! I really cannot wait to listen again!
In Victorian London, attorney Gabriel Utterson has noticed some troubling behavior in his client and friend, the kindly and mild-mannered doctor Henry Jekyll. Not only has word spread that Jekyll is connected to a loathsome and villainous character known only as Mr. Hyde, but he's recently changed his will to leave everything he has to Hyde in the event of his death. Concerned that Hyde is manipulating his friend, Utterson seeks to intervene... especially after Hyde is witnessed as having committed a brutal murder. But when Utterson finally confronts Jekyll, he learns the shocking truth behind Jekyll and Hyde's connection...
Given that this book was written in the 1880s, the language used can feel a bit dry and stilted to modern readers. But Stevenson is still a good storyteller, and knows how to keep the suspense going throughout this story. Even readers already familiar with the twist ending should feel the chills as Utterson pursues the mystery and watches his friend's behavior become more and more erratic as the story goes. And amusingly, the original version of this book contains a joke that modern readers might have assumed was inserted into adaptations by other parties.
While short and a bit dry, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is still a suspenseful read, and well worth checking out if you're only familiar with the adaptations.
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If you are learning English, you will enjoy reading this fantastic book.
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2024