Editor
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella follows a London lawyer, Gabriel Utterson, as he tries to understand why his respectable friend Dr Henry Jekyll has tied his fortune and household to Edward Hyde. Hyde is a small, repellent man who provokes instant revulsion and is linked to an act of savage violence. A neighbourhood puzzle becomes an inquiry into how one person can split public virtue from private appetite, and what that split costs. This Penguin Classics edition, edited by Robert Mighall, pairs the story with other Stevenson tales and scholarly apparatus. Short, tightly plotted and endlessly echoed in popular culture, it is one of the classic books of Victorian Gothic fiction, and its two title characters have become shorthand for the divided self.