Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

In Robert Louis Stevenson's nightmarish, suspenseful, and deeply disturbing novel, Dr. Jekyll experiments with a drug that splits his personality into good and evil elements. Gradually, he loses control of the process and finds himself slipping more and more frequently into the guise of the evil and depraved Hyde. Finally, Hyde is accused of murder, and the good doctor, tormented by the struggle between good and evil that he embodies, is forced into an act of violence by his tortured conscience. Narrated by several onlookers, as well as by Jekyll himself, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, one of the earliest "horror" tales (1886), is arguably the most famous horror story ever written; the concept of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" to signify a split personality has become deeply embedded in the public consciousness, even for those who have never read the book. It has, of course, been dramatized numerous times in numerous ways; it has prompted many interpretations since its publication in 1886, including the view that it was a precursor of Freud's work on the ego and the libido. Stevenson wrote the novel in a fever, finishing it in less than three days while he was deathly ill with tuberculosis. He lived, however, eight more years, dying in Samoa at the age of 44.