Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Tonight, as part of our October classic horror series, we’ll be reading the opening to "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", a Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very good, but sometimes shockingly evil.