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Loading... The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Penguin Popular Classics)by Robert L. Stevenson (otherwise under Robert Louis Stevenson)
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Currently listening to this book through the podcast CraftLit.http://www.craftlit.libsyn.com/   kathisharp | Dec 30, 2009 |  Currently listening to this book through the podcast CraftLit.http://www.craftlit.libsyn.com/  kathisharp | Dec 30, 2009 | First off I would like to mention that this was my first reread ever! I first read The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde quite a few years ago, but I totally forgot the ending and that bothered me. I reread this back in October for the 24 hour read-a-thon but I just now got to putting my review together. There is not much I can say about this book which you don't already know, so I will keep the summary short. Dr Jekyll has been successful in making a potion which allows him to alter his appearance, and thus Mr Hyde is born. When Dr Jekyll drinks the potion, his personality is changed completely and he can let out his evil side in the name of Mr Hyde, someone that nobody knows. Everything was fine as long as he could go back to being Dr Jekyll at his demand, but things turn sour when the evil side starts to take over, until one day he can no longer transform himself back to Dr Jekyll. Since today the story of Dr Jekyll and My Hyde is known all too well, it is hard to be shocked by the horror of the story and you probably won't be surprised by the ending. Compared to what we know as horror fiction today, this does not even come close, it is too short to portray the true evilness of the villain and it is not graphic at all. However thinking about the concept of the plot, I can't help but think how horrifying it still is, and that after reading it a second time. When I read this book I was surprised considering the time when it was written, it was the same reaction I had when I read Dracula by Bram Stoker.This is the classic good versus evil, the other side of the human being. If you have never read this book because you know the story from the various adaptations that were made of it, I suggest you pick this one up and read the true classic. It is short and won't take up much of your time, I say it's worth it. I think this holds true for most classics, we know the basics of the plot because we've heard so much about them, and there are countless adaptations for them, but when I finally get to reading them I always feel that there is nothing like reading the original story! (  ) ariebonn | Dec 13, 2009 | Strangely affecting, considering that obviously I (like everyone else, pretty much) started it already knowing the "secret" at its core. Even though I knew Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would ultimately turn out to be the same man, the story kept me turning pages, in equal parts horrified and fascinated to find out the details of the transformation. A masterwork of suspense. It's weird how there are no women, really, in the whole story. Were there really so many bachelors wandering around London during this era, and did anyone comment on it, or is this just an artifact of fiction? ( ) george.d.ross | Nov 11, 2009 | A good novel about the duality of personality in mankind. ( ) Anagarika | Nov 3, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0486266885, Paperback)The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens. This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:01 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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