The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Horror, Literary

This is not the actual book Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. It is actually a collection of speeches and essays about the REAL book and a summary of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. That fact wasn't stated anywhere on the selling page.

I've never seen a book with such teeny, tiny print. My 8th grader needed this for class and was supposed to annotate as she read. The print size made it difficult to read and the lines were close together with small margins so there was no way she could annotate properly or put the word definitions above the words she didn't know in the text. Even if she didn't have to annotate the book, it's still difficult to read in such a small font. I guess they are keeping the cost down by scrunching the text down and using the least amount of paper possible. I ended up returning this book and buying one that cost double but had normal size print and margins.

[AmazonClassics Kindle Version] Wanted to break in my new Kindle Oasis on a trip to AZ with my daughters and used Jekyll and Hyde as the first book. I've had the physical books in my shelves over the years but it never made it to the top of the queue. I'm glad I was able to dedicate some time to this great story that's been re-done over and over in every conceivable media type. The original story was a bestseller in its time and in the right (classicist) frame of mind the murder mystery horror combo shines as lawyer Utterson tries to unravel the dire interplay between his old friend Jekyll and the interloper Mr. Hyde. Kindle's built in dictionary came in handy again when dealing with archaic word usage, similar to when I read Poe. It was a quick read and highly recommended. j4.

I love a good story of a mad scientist. It is told from the third person perspective of Dr. Jekyll's close friend Mr. Utterson. It's funny to me how long it took for him to put the idea together, though having heard of this story long before I read it, I imagine the thought of someone being two different people is hard to fathom.Still, I enjoyed the surmounting evidence piling up for the real story and especially found it funny that Mr. Utterson had in his possession a letter that would explain things (even a little) very early on from Lanyon.I expected the book to be told from Dr. Jekyll's point of view but I really liked that it focused on a concerned friend trying to understand what was going on with a mysterious will.

Dual nature of man and the power of corruption and evilness. This story as an exercise of fiction is perfect, Hyde is raw, corrupted, temperamental and callous without reason. The way the monster (one himself) starts to take possession is terrible, as an unstoppable sickness that grew out of control. The drama is that Dr. Jekyll is not a bad man, he is friendly, polite and treat well his acquaintances: he is like any of us. And although the monsters that "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" has inspired (Hulk among many others) are muscular and powerful, I think it requires more talent to make a weak and vulnerable monster as Stevenson did.The narrative style is what detracts me considerably of the reading. Stevenson has a powerful imagination but his style feels dull and, for moments, close to perfection but without reaching it. For example this part: "By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent,(...)" In this part we are immerse in the search of a fantastic creature, Stevenson seems to forget that the city is a fantastic creature too, made by men. Some pages afterwards he will acknowledge that the city seems the setting of a nightmare... but he says it, without expressing it.I always remember a novel by Ernesto Sabato... there is a man that meets blind creatures living underground. He, without knowing if it is day or night, is about to emerge at last from that very strange place that is a prison for him. But before he sees at the distance the city he recognizes it by ear: he mentions the never-ending growl of Buenos Aires, the city. And you feel it as a machine complicated and terrible as the monsters he is leaving underneath. Is the feeling I almost feel in this novel of Stevenson but, alas, it is not as intense as it could have been.About the AmazonClassics edition as always neat typography, not errors that I could detect, and just the minimum of data in X-Ray to check characters in the novel but not nosy introductions or prologues by intellectuals to stop the reader. So all in all very well.

I recently read the 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' book which was retold by Pauline Francis. This book is an integral part of the AQA English GCSE so I thought I'd borrow it from my local library and check it out. The story is very short and I managed to finish it in one day. I quite enjoyed reading the book. Having watched the film prior to reading the book, I sort of knew what to expect but the book and the film were actually quite different. The book was a nice easy read and seems to be aimed at younger audiences. The book is a classic. I liked the small illustrations in the book too. If you are looking for a book that's quick and easy to read, look no further! If this review was helpful, please click the thumbs up button - it really helps me out! :)

Robert Louis Stevenson had always wanted to write a tale of the good and evil struggle in man, and eventually he was able to with this novella, which was first published in 1886. It would seem that the author eventually managed to come up with this tale due to a dream that he apparently had, and which his wife was to tell his biographer about. From thereon then history was made, as this soon proved a bestseller and of course Jekyll and Hyde has become a part of the language, with for instance a Jekyll and Hyde personality.I should think that even if you have never read this before you will know the basic story as it has become so well known, but imagine the first readers of this, starting what would seem a mystery tale, and then by the end exploding into something much more intriguing and frightening. A celebrity in his lifetime and admired by many great writers of his age, including the likes of Henry James, so after his death his status started to wane, especially as authors such as Virginia Woolf denigrated his work, but even so some of his books always remained popular, this being one of them.As we read this, we do not really find out much about Dr Jekyll and his apparent friend, the odious Mr Hyde, who as we read on is wanted for murder. An odious man, it is only in the closing part of this novella that we actually read of his connection with Dr Jekyll as the full truth emerges for his friend and lawyer, Utterson. Thus we have a tale that has intrigued many and also been quite influential. The dual nature of the characters of the title can open up to all sorts of interpretations, even including Scottish Nationalism, but usually people concern themselves with the psychological aspect here, of someone fighting their baser traits, and including mental illness. At the time laudanum was in popular usage and this can also thus be seen as a tale of drug addiction and its consequences.Always a joy to read this is one of those tales, despite being a novella and thus short, that you always remember. I cannot remember how old I was when I first read this, but it has always remained something to come back to time and again, and if you have never read this before then you really are in for a treat. Rather like Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’, this is a story that just holds you spellbound and makes you really appreciate the sheer artistry and inventiveness of some authors.

I'm not sure it's worth my reviewing the story in this book, since everyone is so familiar with it. But if you haven't actually read this original version then it is well worth doing so, if you can cope with the beautiful classic writing style.The main reason I wanted to do this review was to let you know just how nice this book is physically.The format is a Flexibound Edition by Barnes & Noble. It's basically a faux leather-bound cover. Obviously not real leather, it is a soft feel plastic or rubber which is marginally flexible in the hand.The first and last pages are backed in the old-world style using frantically patterned end papers.The page edges are colour sprayed to complement the cover.There is also a page marking ribbon.Even the relatively thick paper stock has slightly off white colouring and lends itself to the feel of an old original collectable.In short, for the incredibly low retail price of this book you get an absolutely stunning edition, which looks fantastic on the shelf in a collected set and feels great in the hand as you read. Barnes and Noble do a nice collection in this format. Just search for (Barnes Noble Flexibound editions) on Amazon.

First published back in 1886 Stevenson’s novella has even given the language a saying in the phrase Jekyll and Hyde. The story itself is told in a multiple narrative form as the lawyer, Utterson pieces together what has happened. Although nowadays as the story is so famous and even those who have never read it before know what it is about, we forget when it was first published this was also a mystery, as the first readers would not immediately know that the two characters of Jekyll and Hyde were the same person.A success on both sides of the Atlantic it is quite easy to see why as this is gothic, it is horror, for the first readers a mystery incorporating sensationalist themes, and also a morality tale as well as being allegorical. Its influence on popular culture cannot be overlooked as this story has been used and adapted into numerous other stories and ideas. What for Stevenson was an interest initially in personalities and then inspiration coming from what we now call dissociative identity disorder, which most of us know by its pervious label of multiple personality disorder, led to this fantastic novella being written.As we see here Jekyll loves the freedom that Hyde gives him to a certain extent and I suspect that this is one reason why this has always remained a popular tale, after all we all lose our temper at times and we all have dark thoughts, and the idea of Hyde gives our imaginations a chance to run free on things that we could do if we didn’t follow our moral constraints.

I can't comment on the story as I haven't read the book yet. This copy was ordered for my daughter as she is studying this text for GCSE. I know it's not a long novel, but I was surprised by the size of the book. Its dimensions are larger than a normal paperback but it's very slim, so it's more like a pamphlet than a book (I've taken a photo of a 'normal' sized paperback book on top of this book to show the difference). The binding seems to be flimsy and of poor quality; as shown in the photo the front cover is already bending and my daughter hasn't even started to read it yet! I'm not sure it is going to stand up to the rigours of two years' GCSE study - only time will tell, but my initial impression of the quality of this product is not great.