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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde[1] is a 1886 Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend Dr. Henry Jekyll and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is one of the most famous pieces of English literature, and is considered to be a defining book of the gothic horror genre. The novella has also had a sizable impact on popular culture, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" being used in vernacular to refer to people with an outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil nature.
Inspiration and writing
Robert Louis Stevenson in 1885
Stevenson had long been intrigued by the idea of how human personalities can reflect the interplay of good and evil. While still a teenager, he developed a script for a play about William Brodie, which he later reworked with the help of W. E. Henley and which was produced for the first time in 1882.[2] In early 1884, he wrote the short story "Markheim", which he revised in 1884 for publication in a Christmas annual. According to his essay "A Chapter on Dreams" (Scribner's, Jan. 1888), he racked his brains for an idea for a story and had a dream, and upon waking had the intuition for two or three scenes that would appear in the story Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Biographer, Graham Balfour, quoted Stevenson's wife, Fanny Stevenson:
In the small hours of one morning,[...] I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale." I had awakened him at the first transformation scene.[3]
Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's stepson, wrote: "I don't believe that there was ever such a literary feat before as the writing of Dr. Jekyll. I remember the first reading as though it were yesterday. Louis came downstairs in a fever; read nearly half the book aloud; and then, while we were still gasping, he was away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days."[3]
Inspiration may also have come from the writer's friendship with an Edinburgh-based French teacher, Eugene Chantrelle, who was convicted and executed for the murder of his wife in May 1878.[4] Chantrelle, who had appeared to lead a normal life in the city, poisoned his wife with opium. According to author Jeremy Hodges,[5] Stevenson was present throughout the trial and as "the evidence unfolded he found himself, like Dr. Jekyll, 'aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde'." Moreover, it was believed that the teacher had committed other murders both in France and Britain by poisoning his victims at supper parties with a "favourite dish of toasted cheese and opium".[6]
As was customary, Mrs. Stevenson would read the draft and offer her criticisms in the margins. Robert Stevenson was confined to bed at the time from a haemorrhage. In her comments in the manuscript, she observed that in effect the story was really an allegory, but Robert was writing it as a story. After a while, Robert called her back into the bedroom and pointed to a pile of ashes: he had burnt the manuscript in fear that he would try to salvage it, and thus forced himself to start again from nothing, writing an allegorical story as she had suggested. Scholars debate whether he really burnt his manuscript; there is no direct factual evidence for the burning, but it remains an integral part of the history of the novella.[7] In another version of the story, Stevenson came downstairs to read the manuscript for his wife and stepson. Enraged by his wife's criticism, he went back to his room, only to come back later admitting she was right. Then he threw the original draft into the fire, and stopped his wife and stepson from rescuing it.[8]
Stevenson rewrote the story in three to six days. A number of later biographers have alleged that Stevenson was on drugs during the frantic re-write; for example, William Gray's revisionist history A Literary Life (2004) said he used cocaine while other biographers said he used ergot.[9] However, the standard history, according to the accounts of his wife and son (and himself), says he was bed-ridden and sick while writing it. According to Osbourne, "The mere physical feat was tremendous and, instead of harming him, it roused and cheered him inexpressibly". He continued to refine the work for four to six weeks after the initial revision. The novella was written in the southern English seaside town of Bournemouth, where Stevenson had moved to benefit from its sea air and warmer climate.[citation needed]