The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde E-Book

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Herausgeber: Robert Louis Stevenson
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The work is commonly associated with the rare mental condition often called "split personality", referred to in psychiatry as dissociative identity disorder, where within the same body there exists more than one distinct personality.In this case, there are two personalities within Dr. Jekyll, one apparently good and the other evil. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.

Leseprobe

The Strange Case of

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

by

Robert Louis Stevenson

Biographical note

Novelist and essayist, was born at Edinburgh, the son of Thomas Stevenson, a distinguished civil engineer. His health was extremely delicate. He was destined for the engineering profession, in which his family had for two generations been eminent, but having neither inclination nor physical strength for it, he in 1871 exchanged it for law, and was called to the Bar in 1875, but never practised.

From childhood his interests had been literary, and in 1871 he began to contribute to theEdinburgh University Magazineand thePortfolio. A tour in a canoe in 1876 led to the publication in 1878 of his first book,An Inland Voyage. In the same year,The New Arabian Nights, afterwards separately published appeared in magazines, and in 1879 he brought outTravels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. In that year he went to California and married Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe in 1880 he entered upon a period of productiveness which, in view of his wretched health, was, both as regards quantity and worth, highly remarkable.

The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edinburgh, and by the publication ofVirginibus Puerisque.

Other works followed in rapid succession.Treasure Island[1882],Prince OttoandThe Child’s Garden of Verse[1885],Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeandKidnapped[1886],Underwoods(poetry),Memories and Portraits(essays), andThe Merry Men, a collection of short stories [1887], and in 1888The Black Arrow.

In 1887 he went to America, and in the following year visited the South Sea Islands where, in Samoa, he settled in 1890, and where he died and is buried. In 1889The Master of Ballantraeappeared, in 1892Across the PlainsandThe Wrecker, in 1893Island Nights EntertainmentsandCatriona, and in 1894The Ebb Tidein collaboration with his step-son, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne.

By this time his health was completely broken, but to the last he continued the struggle, and left the fragmentsSt. IvesandWeir of Hermiston, the latter containing some of his best work. They were published in 1897.

Though the originality and power of Stevenson’s writings was recognised from the first by a select few, it was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide may be said to have turned with the publication ofTreasure Islandin 1882, which at once gave him an assured place among the foremost imaginative writers of the day. His greatest power is, however, shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th century, such asKidnapped,Catriona, andWeir of Hermiston, and in those,e.g.,The Child’s Garden of Verse, which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology of child-life;Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydeis a marvellously powerful and subtle psychological story, and some of his short tales also are masterpieces. Of theseThrawn JanetandWill of the Millmay be mentioned as examples in widely different kinds. His excursions into the drama in collaboration with W.E. Henley —Deacon Brodie,Macaire,Admiral Guinea,Beau Austin, — added nothing to his reputation. His style is singularly fascinating, graceful, various, subtle, and with a charm all its own.

Table of Contents

Story of the Door

Search for Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease

The Carew Murder Case

Incident of the Letter

Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon

Incident at the Window

The Last Night

Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative

Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case

Story of the Door

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 theatre, 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.