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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

1875

  • fiction
  • physicians
  • physicians in fiction
  • multiple personality in fiction
  • multiple personality
  • self-experimentation in medicine in fiction
  • self-experimentation in medicine
  • ficción
  • médicos
  • novela de terror

The story

Mr. Gabriel Utterson is a serious, austere lawyer living a humdrum life in Victorian London. Yet there is a strange clause in his friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll's will: should he disappear for more than 3 months, everything will be inherited by Hyde. But after Edward Hyde's darker nature is revealed one dark winters night, Mr. Utterson begins to investigate the connection between the two men, and finds the dark secret binding them closer then he could have ever thought imaginable. Adapted countless times in film, some times in video game form, and referenced countless times in popular culture, here is the story that started it all: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde!

What it’s like

Fog-thick Victorian London, rendered in sepia-brown and soot-grey: gaslit streets, lamplight pooling on wet cobbles, the close, panelled warmth of a lawyer's office and the sealed, dust-lined quiet of a doctor's laboratory. Stevenson's prose is spare, measured and faintly formal, a clipped Victorian voice that reports strange events with the cool precision of a witness, so dread builds through restraint rather than spectacle. Pacing is short and tense, a novella that moves like a slow fuse, with long quiet stretches of reasoning and letters punctuated by sudden, cold shocks. The register is cerebral unease: a melancholy about respectability, hidden selves and the cost of appearances. Violence is brief and sharp, a single murder told in plain terms, with no gore and little on-page cruelty, though the atmosphere of menace hangs throughout. Suits a rainy Sunday, a late-night read with a single lamp, or a quiet evening with a cup of tea. For readers who want gothic atmosphere, moral puzzle and a classic mystery without graphic detail.

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